Ukrainian army veteran Yaroslav Sherstyuk, right, developer of the MilChat messaging app, makes a presentation to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, third from left, and other Ukrainian military officials. (Photo courtesy Yaroslav Sherstyuk)
Nolan Peterson, Daily Signal: A Lesson for NATO From Ukraine: In a War With Russia, Smartphones Might Be the Safest Way to Communicate
KYIV, Ukraine—After four years of constant combat against Russia and its separatist proxies in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian troops have learned the value of creativity in warfare.
The battlefield innovations in technology and tactics that Ukrainian troops have made on the fly in eastern Ukraine reflect the sort of forward thinking, flexible mindset needed by NATO military officials to counter the Russian hybrid warfare threat.
For instance, the Ukrainians have sometimes used commercially available smartphone messaging apps as a primary means of military communication—especially in cases when combined Russian-separatist forces’ artillery has homed in on the Ukrainians’ radio signals.
“We mainly used encrypted walkie-talkies, but this was not reliable for very long,” said Alexey Kelt, a 23-year-old Ukrainian combat veteran of the war in eastern Ukraine. “There have been cases when the shells came after we talked on the encrypted radio.”
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WNU Editor: I will be very wary of using smartphones. Recent revelations on how U.S. tech companies like Facebook and Google can track us via through our phones should make everyone pause on using this tools to communicate.