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Digital warfare reaches fuel maps as Ukrainian users create confusion across Russia
(www.techradar.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2026
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The political will is more than just the army.
If I understood correctly, many Russians are or were in favour of the war, which is hardly surprising while they're not the ones suffering the cost. Even when they do, a populace under the impression that the cost is some sacrifice for a good or necessary war can be quite resilient. And even if they lose faith in the war, there is a certain amount of patience and tolerance.
But the greater that cost becomes, the more that support will erode. The more their lives will be disrupted, the more discontent the regime will have to devote resources to quell or at least smooth over. It probably won't escalate to the point of open revolt unless the regime is particularly inept, but the greater the tensions and pressure, the more the strategic calculations will shift to alleviating these tensions (precisely to avoid revolt).
For people with a little spare time that might not be able to contribute directly, it's a low-barrier way to be at least a bit of a nuisance, amplifying the perceived impact of the shortage in ways propaganda can't so easily handwave away.
Wether such measures have great impact is hard to gauge, particularly while starting but also often in retrospect, because social pressure and dynamics are complicated, war is messy and emotions are hard to calculate. But if it utilises a previously untapped resource (by mobilising people willing to troll the Russian populace), it's worth a shot.
I'd like to close my argument with a note on strategic commumication: You are absolutely right that keyboard warriors risk far less than actual "might get blown to chunks" fighters. But what does calling it out achieve? Does it help the soldiers to know their international support is useless? Does it help the misguided to tell them they're worthless? Do you expect those you consider cowards to go "you know, that dude is right, let me uproot my life and risk death to volunteer at a front alien to me"?
By encouraging them to keep trying to be a pain in the ass of imperial aggressors, you might recruit even the reluctant, the lazy, the cowardly to become a sort of "digital guerilla". They might not be of much use now, but the more people look for places to sting, the greater the chance that someone will find a place where it does actually hurt. Better to have them try something than do nothing.
If that means patting them on the back and going "Sure buddy, you're helping, keep doing your thing", that's worth more than demanding all or nothing from them.
Not quite. Russians for the most part just want to be left the fuck alone. The ones that do support it only do because TV is their only source of information and their support is limited to calling foreign leaders names in their kitchens and shitposting on facebook and whatsapp to their information deprived peers. When the push comes to shove they would only ever accept the duty if they were too lazy to find a way out. So most people on the front line are either criminals or gamblers who don't really have a choice.
I feel like it does the opposite by diluting a definitive victory:
Oil refinery got blown up which led to fuel shortages - "fucking Putin and his cronies can't keep their shit together, couldn't spare an AA from one of their villas to protect critical infrastructure, fuck them".
I'm late to work because I had to spend 10 more minutes going to a different station because someone posted misinformation - "fucking Ukrainians trying to ruin my day again, fuck them, maybe Putin was onto something...".
The difference is: one action is directed by the government at a government, the other - at the people by the people.
What I think really happens is that people who were assholes just gotten an excuse to be assholes. I'd like to be proven wrong, but I'm yet to see anything actually good come out of NAFO and the likes. So far they've only managed to turn quite a few anti-war Russians against directly supporting Ukraine, by means of afforementioned scam calls, harrassment of opposition leaders and of people in neutral countries. It's especially appalling to see coming from able-bodied young men who clearly fled conscription, and I'd like to counter the argument by saying that we shouldn't encourage nor cheer laziness and pure national hatred. After all, they don't have to go to the meat grinder, there are quite a lot of opportunities far behind the frontlines, I honestly would've probably gone myself if I were allowed and not for the severe consequences of it.
There will be some who have this reaction, but it takes one hell of a PR spin to make them think that the Ukranians, after 4 years of siege and bombings throughout their territory, aren't justified in whatever payback they might be able to give.
It elevates the Ukranian people from "irrelevant, has no impact on me" to something to at least think about.
Why so? I think it's the intent that matters more than the magnitude. As Russian, I cheer whenever Ukraine bombs military targets on Russia's territory (or anything that's boosting Russia's GDP for that matter) and I find US's ban on doing that to be outright criminal. A drone blew up an apartment building in my home city with no military targets in sight, and I truly believe it was a result of miscalculation, jamming or some other fault, same with Russian drones on Kiyv and cluster munitions dropped on Donbas. But don't you dare spit in my coffee while we're both sit in the same boat as refuges of war in Tbilisi, and I'm not going to shit through anyone's car sunroof regardless if the plate says RU or UA either. Planting national tensions is exactly what Putin wants, just so that he could one day say "Look, they're all assholes, let's go fuck em up" and call for full on proper mobilization instead of tiptoeing with partial ones.
You mean nukes? Our (US side) propaganda implies that full on proper mobilization happened 4 years ago and Russia is out of non-nuclear options.
The september 2022 one? It was yet another of Putin's half measures. By law he can't call for mobilization without declaring war, which, you know, he didn't. It was a legally undefined "special military operation" . Therefore, the mobilization was as well only a "partial mobilization" to test waters, which nonetheless caused massive uproar throughout the country. The regional administrations just barely managed to scrape by and fulfill the required 300k soldier quota and quell down the protests, after which they abandoned the idea. Since then most new soldiers are lured into contract service through:
Deception - bro pls sign this contract pls bro I promise u wont storm trenches bro just pilot the drone bro, far back beyond frontlines bro... - except for smalltext clearly saying that if you're shit at it or fail training you'll get reassigned to other units that just happen to storm trenches and with no way out of it. Except for a lucky few that now have to travel between colleges and universities, face students laughing in their faces, and try to convince them to sign up as well. And if they fail to, they themselves go back storming enemy trenches.
Absurdly high (by Russian standards) signing bonuses, salaries and death/injury compensations. Something in the likes of $50k signing, $3k/mo and with various bonuses you can rack up something like $100k a year, up to $200k if you get killed, while average Ivan just barely survives on $500-1000/mo (if he got any job at all). This put a huge strain on Russia's economy, but it somehow, just barely, is still holding on, though the prices are ridiculous at this point.
Recruiting criminals, which makes it a lot more dangerous to live there when there are killers on the loose, some who did a couple rounds of murdering and trading their decade long sentences into year-long warzone trips
North Korea (and other poor countries)
Otherwise, no, Russia still has a lot of manpower. Not me, nor my friends, nor my relatives, nor friends relatives or relatives friends got called in or served voluntarily. Except for one guy I only saw once who was a gambling addict, got into severe debt, did a trip, drove a supply truck back and forth for a year, returned, repaid all the debts, and, addicted to easy money, went back for a second round and immediately got blown up. RIP bozo.
US recruitment tactics during Vietnam (and even after) weren't far from this.
When I was in college in the 1980s they offered to pay my full tuition and other expenses ($40K/yr) in exchange for a 2 year tour on a submarine. Didn't sound like a good deal to me.
In Vietnam, my dad had a friend who did one tour that went pretty easy (by luck) as special forces recon, dropped behind enemy lines to look around, then evacuated by helicopter after a couple of hours. He was so chuffed about being a super soldier he went back for a 2nd tour and actually got shot at that time, he survived - no physical injuries, but he's deeply mentally scarred for life - has a series of ex-wives who used him for his veterans' benefits to get their teeth straightened (no lie: 4 sets of braces within 10 years) then they'd leave him. He finally went hermit in a cabin in the mountains.
Back around to modern times (which are not very different), we have a neighbor who went to Iraq - lost both legs, now he's living on benefits and has a bad-news woman who he somehow doesn't kick out who's sponging off of his benefits while abusing him, both strung out on drugs, woman has another boyfriend he openly knows about, cops doing crime scene investigations around their house a couple of times a year... it's not a great thing for society.
Our US side propaganda paints the manpower issue for Russia's Ukraine adventure as scraping the bottom of the recruitment barrel - 30K Russian casualties per month, forced conscription feeding the frontlines through loopholes in the laws that say they can't do that, etc. I'm very glad we're not stuck in Afghanistan / Iraq anymore, that was a huge waste of good people over 9 years - peaking at 170,000 deployed - they say. Our news says Russia has over 720,000 pairs of boots on the ground in Ukraine, with a homeland population half that of the US. That has to hurt a lot, and it's going to continue to hurt for several generations.