[Skybird]

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes:


Russia is considered a pioneer of electronic warfare and is notorious for cyberattacks. However, there is not much evidence of this in the war against Ukraine. Russia's air force also seems to be holding back so far. Experts cite several reasons.

Ukraine's armed forces are holding up surprisingly well so far. Meanwhile, reports are piling up that the advance of Russian troops has been marked by strategic mishaps and, at times, bumbling mistakes. The methods of Russian warfare also appear surprisingly conventional: Putin is fighting with tanks, missiles, ground troops.

Military experts and analysts are surprised that the numerically and technologically superior Russian troops are acting in such an uncoordinated manner. It is striking that Russia is not acting in three areas as expected just a few weeks ago: Neither in terms of digital infrastructure nor in terms of cyber warfare and air combat has Putin played his trump cards.

Today, war is always waged in the virtual world. To win the battle of images and information on social networks, it would be necessary to cut off the attacked country from the Internet. To be sure, Internet connectivity in Ukraine has been severely affected at times by the Russian attacks, and was reported to have temporarily dropped below 20 percent of normal performance levels last Thursday. But Ukraine's digital infrastructure has not been a major target of the missile attacks to date.

No, says Polish military expert Konrad Muzyka. The goal of the Russian attack, he says, is to overthrow the Ukrainian leadership. It is not in Russia's interest to permanently damage Ukraine's infrastructure. Finally, he said, it is strategically important to antagonize the Ukrainian population as little as possible. The initial instructions to Russian troops were therefore not to attack civilians and to interfere with their lives as little as possible. However, Muzyka also says that the rules for the troops could change at any time or have already changed. In that case, he says, there is a threat of brutalization of the war. The shelling of the city of Kharkiv, for example, shows that Russian troops are increasingly ruthless.

Nevertheless, there is a danger for Putin in the social networks. Ukrainian President Volodimir Selensky's video messages boost Ukrainians' morale, as do videos of citizens standing in the way of Russian troops or posting instructions on military defense. "Russia has lost the PR game," Muzyka says.
The war is also taking place online, for example on Telegram. A woman warms herself at a space heater in a bomb shelter in Kiev.
The war also takes place on the web, for example on Telegram. A woman warms herself at a mushroom heater in an air raid shelter in Kiev.

However, the Ukrainians have identified not only the population in their own country and the world public as their target audience, but above all the Russian people: For example, one website documented the number of fallen Russian soldiers, which was hardly reported on in the Russian state media. Since Russia had the website blocked, the documentation has continued on a Telegram channel. The network has a high reach in Russia, with one in four residents estimated to have a Telegram account.

Putin must therefore win the digital war at home as well. To that end, Russia's information technology regulator, Roskomnadzor, decided last week to slow down Facebook's services. Along with blocking and filtering websites, this is one of the tools the Russian leadership has been using for several years to gain control over digital content. Access to Twitter has also reportedly been blocked for some Russian users, according to the group.

In the run-up to the Russian offensive, Ukrainian authorities had been bracing for the possibility that the Russians might cut off electricity or cripple the cellphone network with a large-scale cyberattack before the invasion, a senior official told NZZ. That's because Russia has demonstrated its technical prowess in this area in the past. Since the annexation of Crimea and the start of the war in the Donbass, Ukraine has seen several cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. Two attacks on the power supply were particularly spectacular.

But it didn't get that far this time. There were a number of cyberattacks the day before the invasion. Malware was used to disable the computers of companies and organizations in the financial, defense, aviation and IT sectors. But this attack did not have any noticeable impact on the electricity or cell phone networks.

One of the reasons Putin is hesitant this time around about cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, such as power and telecommunications networks or water supplies, could be their complexity. Such operations are difficult to carry out and their effects are uncertain, says Myriam Dunn Cavelty of the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich. "Therefore, the question is whether they are even worthwhile during an ongoing military conflict."

But it could also be because of improved protection. After the experience with the blackouts, Ukraine has, among other things, upgraded its capabilities to detect attackers in its networks as early as possible. The authorities have long been working with private IT security firms to do this. In addition, the United States and the United Kingdom are said to have sent experts to Ukraine as early as December.

However, Russia may very well have carried out targeted cyber operations, for example against the Ukrainian armed forces, which have not been known so far. Dunn Cavelty is convinced of this: "In the context of electronic warfare, there are certainly spatially limited actions to disrupt the adversary." These include, for example, jamming the GPS signal, manipulating the enemy's radar, or locating cell phone signals to obtain information about the enemy's positions. In the past, corresponding vehicles have also been spotted in the Donbass.

In another area, the Russian attack strategy also turns out to be different than previously thought: Before the Russian invasion began last Thursday, observers and experts were virtually unanimous in assuming that Russian forces would gain sovereignty over Ukrainian airspace within a very short time. The offensive started as expected: Using cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, the Russians targeted airfields, radars and air defense systems, destroying several S-300 air defense systems, among others.

The next, logical step would have been to carry out airstrikes with fighter jets, which would have finally disabled the Ukrainian air force. But this step failed to materialize. For British air force expert Justin Bronk, the Russian approach is a puzzle. "The Russians have about 300 modern, operational fighter jets in the immediate vicinity of Ukraine," he says. "And yet we've seen almost no air force sorties."

Although Russia has repeatedly affirmed that it has air sovereignty, Bronk says there is virtually nothing to indicate that this is actually the case. The British Ministry of Defense also reported Tuesday that Russia does not control Ukrainian airspace. Thus, even after several days of fighting, Ukraine is still managing to destroy Russian warplanes with Bayraktar drones and shoot down helicopters and fighter jets with surface-to-air missiles.

According to Bronk, there is no simple explanation for why the Russian Air Force has been so restrained so far. He suspects that coordination between air and ground forces is so poor that mutual firing of friendly fire cannot be ruled out. Bronk also points out that Russian fighter pilots complete only about one hundred hours of flight time per year and are thus insufficiently prepared for the complex situation in Ukrainian airspace.

In addition, the Russian Air Force has only a limited arsenal of precision munitions, says Bronk. As a result, fighter pilots have limited ability to provide air support to ground forces, he says. But the situation could change very quickly: "It's possible that the Air Force is waiting for political clearance to use unguided munitions in urban areas."

So Russia certainly has the ability to escalate the conflict further. Be that with aerial area bombardments, disinformation campaigns or attacks on digital infrastructure. But any further escalation will come with loss of life and only further incite the Ukrainian population against the Russian invaders. Vladimir Putin wanted to appear as a "liberator" in Ukraine. He will probably be remembered more as a destroyer.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

https://www.nzz.ch/international/ukr...aus-ld.1672126


Lesson of it: things can turn much, much worse and uglier once the Russian attackers do not fight with one hand bound on their back anymore.The past 6 days - were the easier part of the war for the Ukrainians.

The Ukrainian government says Belarus troops have crossed the border and entered the Ukraine this morning.

Russia tries to intimidate Finland to not moving closer to NATO.

Russian separatists announce they mull attacking Mariupol in strength.

The UK blocks its harbours to ALL Russian ships, private or traders.

Russian goods dissaypöear from the shelves of German supermarkets. Contracts get cancelled.

Moscow says it will attack the uzkrainian ikntel'S informaiton networks, and told the population in the vici8nty of their builkdings to leave theri home. I think the rela big bombs and nasty things will be used here then. The strongest supportive weapon of the Ukraine is Selensky and his videos. They must get rid of that, at all cost.

Moscow mulls the ban of foreign investors accessing their investment since Russia to stop them from pulling out of Russia. I never accepted it that Western investors think they must invest into regimes like China, Iran, or Russia. Every loss they suffer now is a lecture, and I appllaude their losses. Helps them to learn, I hope.

The UK wants Russia exlcuded form the security ocuncil, which as I see it would end the existence of this pretty much corrupted and pointless gremium. Wehtehr that happens for sur,e is soemthign different.

Russia says the ukriane ha sno more access to the Asow Sea.

Gazprom has reduced its gas exports in the first two months of this year by one third. I could bite my face. How much I have underestimated this apsected of it all, gas. I made a complete idiot of myself over this, and I take the mockery. I mistook Putin'S state and ways with the contract loyalty of the Sovjet Union. That is my explanation for my failure, it cannot be an excuse. Laugh about me.

Maersk stops deliveries to Russia.

And so on and on. If there is one headline to summarise all these events, then it is this: ESCALATION.


The war of the imminent days will see less precision and more brutality and big callibres used by Russian attackers. The costs for the ukrainian people will become much higher.