According to the Russians, the reason why the ammunition depot was tracked down and attacked is due to the excessive use of the telephone by the Russian troops. “Using telephones, the owners of the telephone network – in this case a Ukrainian telephone company – can trace which masts are being used to make calls,” says defense specialist Peter Wijninga of the Center for Strategic Studies in The Hague. “And if a conversation is picked up by multiple antennas, you can be located very precisely.”
The command of the Russian army and the Ministry of Defense know this and therefore forbid troops from using their phones. But the ban doesn’t appear to have much effect, according to Wijninga. “It’s normal with those phones,” he continues. “Since day one, these types of signals have been used by the Ukrainians to locate Russian targets, or even track down and eliminate generals. So this attack is no exception.’
Main cause
Wijninga says phone use is “framed” by the Russians as the root cause of the attack, but points out that many other things are wrong with the Russian occupiers. “Of course the use of the phone is a big reason to track this group, but many other things are also going wrong on the Russian side,” he says. “That they placed so many people near an ammunition depot thirteen kilometers from the front, and therefore within range of Ukrainian artillery, was a real mistake.”
His criticism is shared by many Russian military bloggers and even parliamentarians, who accuse the Russian defense leadership of complete ignorance. Wijninga can understand that criticism well. “They’re partly right,” he says. ‘What is also happening here is that the Russians also have a huge lack of experienced leaders. Officers and NCOs who have sufficient experience to handle this type of group.’
Big mistake
He points out that the Russian ranks are currently filled mostly with recently recruited soldiers who have hardly any training. “They’re not well directed and there’s not proper supervision of the troops, so that could have happened. The decision to camp that group in a school building so close to the facade can easily be seen as a gross mistake.’
According to Wijninga, the truth about the death toll – which Russia has now pegged at 89, while Ukraine is talking about 400 deaths – still lies in the middle. After all, a barracks is not set up for a few dozen soldiers. “They will be large numbers,” he concludes. ‘It remains to be seen whether many people were actually killed, but the Russians are slowly but surely adjusting their numbers upwards. This could also be because the wounded died in hospital. But we can’t say exactly.”
He concludes: “Ukrainian numbers are clearly an estimate, possibly based on the devastation they saw, which can be observed by Ukrainian informants in the occupied territory. So we’ll have to wait and see, but the possibility of big numbers is definitely there.’
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