XBradTC

Here’s a bit of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) showing Russian Electronic Warfare activities in support of “separatist” “militias” (that is, Russian forces) in the fight for Debaltseve in Ukraine.

It is worth reminding, that in a recent publicationR-330ZH ‘ZHITEL’ in Donbas According to Social Profiles and Drone Flyovers we have already presented evidence about this Russain AJS: a video revealing the jammer on its march towards the Ukrainian border in the summer of 2014, station elements in pictures in the profile of a Vostok gang militant in the area of Makiivka in the summer of 2015, as well as recent drone images confirming the positioning of the station in the same area as of March-April 2016.

There was only one element missing in the body of evidence: we needed to get inside the Zhitel station. Hackers of the Trinity group gave us this opportunity. The cloud storage connected to the mobile phone of a Russian serviceman contained two interesting photos. During their analysis, we found that these photos were taken on January 24, 2015 at 19:49 and 19:51 Kyiv time using a Lenovo A516 smartphone. They are showing working screens of the R-330Zh Zhitel AJS terminal.

The R-330ZH isn’t an especially significant piece of hardware. It’s been around a while, and is well known to the West.  It is just more confirmation of Russian involvement in a battle they claim they aren’t involved in.

It should be noted that for all the US investment in Electronic Warfare, the vast majority of our investment in is Airborne Electronic Attack, and that Russian jamming and intercept capabilities in ground based EW, particularly against ground based communications and networks far outstrips our own. Maybe we ought to think about changing that.

What’s also interesting is that the jamming appears to be targeted at tactical level hand held radios such as the Baofeng UV-5R, which I would note is quite popular here in the US with survivalists and preppers. the UV-5R is a commercial radio, available off the shelf, as opposed to a more sophisticated tactical radio one would expect to see in military service. The problem there is, the Ukraine Army uses Soviet era radios, which the Russians are equally capable of jamming.