In early May Russia enacted yet another law seeking to prevent military personnel from posting information on the Internet that reveals what the troops are up to, where they are and, most importantly contradicts what the government says is going on. The new rules go even further, banning military personnel from ever revealing on the Internet that they are, or were, in the military. There’s more with a ban on troops possessing information storage devices like USB drives, memory cards or portable hard drives. Also banned are any devices that capture and store information electronically. Also banned are any electronic devices that provide information on where the troops are or were.
Why do the Russians even bother? It's not like we don't know what the Russians are doing. The question has always been what to do about it. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014 set the template for Russia's so-called "hybrid" warfare:
Over-analyzing Russia's deception causes the West to miss the point that "hybrid warfare" is very simple: Russia invades a country; Russia denies it has invaded a country; and the West goes along with Russian denials.
That's it. The West could have reacted very differently by simply refusing to go along with the Russian denials and acting on what we knew was going on--Russia had invaded a free (if corrupt) country.
Instead we act is if we need CSI: Donbas to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Russians are fighting inside Ukraine on the orders of Putin.
Oh sure, this weakness (and we have the same problem of revealing too much) is useful to Western intelligence to get some granularity of what is going on.
But the big picture good enough for government work doesn't require this kind of information. The West will continue to deny what we know to avoid unpleasant realities.
