How phone calls made on battlefield have brought deadly consequences in Russia-Ukraine war

Communicating with a loved one on the frontline is not a harmless act anymore, at least not in the war raging between Russia and Ukraine which has reached a point where doing so could lead to lethal consequences. The war has transcended to the cellular realm, where one force could target the other simply by tracking cell phones.

Soldiers on both sides of the battle have been urged to be wary of using their mobiles to contact family members due to the dangers it can pose. In Russia, the death of hundreds of servicemen has been attributed to the use of mobile phones, which could possibly have been tracked to launch Monday’s strike on the city of Makiivka.

But how are phones being weaponised? 

As technology advances, systems possess the ability to determine a phone’s location by accessing an internal GPS. In Ukraine, Russian forces have been putting the Leer-3 electronic warfare system to use in order to locate the positions of Ukrainian servicemen. 

The system, which consists of two drones and a command truck, is equipped to locate over 2,000 phones within a wide range of 3.7 miles, according to Sky News. On the other side of the war, Ukraine’s intelligence is believed to be relying on a similar system. In March 2022, American officials told the New York Times that a top Russian general was killed after he made a phone call that was tracked by Ukraine.

Researchers at Copenhagen University have termed phone calls as "the digital version of carelessly lighting a cigarette at night.” As a result of the weaponisation of phone calls, the Ukrainian army ordered servicemen to abide by a list of rules. Some of the orders on the list include “Leave your own SIM card at home,” “Always keep your phone off. Your life depends on it. Grad missiles will hit your whole squad,” and “Watch over your comrades – a friend calls his girlfriend and an hour or so later your position gets shelled or attacked.” 

What makes phone calls more life-threatening aren’t the devices themselves, but also their users. It is likely for soldiers to develop a pattern of negligently using their phones if doing so for the first time does not yield a disastrous result. However, sometimes, the usage comes out of pure boredom. "Sitting out there in the dugouts, trenches and bunkers for days and even weeks with nothing to do, people start going out of their heads. You need something to take your mind off of things,” one soldier stationed in Donbas told a researcher.