Loose Lips Sink Not Just Ships

You can't win war if you inform your enemy of your every step

"Here's how Mossad recruits its agents: a step by step guide to what works, and doesn’t” by Aaron Schwarzman for Israeli Epoch.

If this headline, which I just made up alongside the author and the publication, put a grin on your face, I really can’t blame you. It’s an antic — but its purpose, sadly, is far from humorous.

Today, I came across a headline by David Kirichenko, a Ukrainian war reporter who currently collaborates with the Euromaidan Press, which, admittedly, attracted my attention but, perhaps, for not so right reasons.

“Ukraine built a drone wall to stop Russia — then fiber cables made it useless,” it read.

I clicked the article and screened the text diligently before one particular passage caught my eye:

“Davyd, callsign “Poliak,” a drone pilot from the 419th Battalion of Unmanned Systems, has witnessed firsthand how Russian forces combine fiber-optic drones with high-speed motorcycle assaults on their positions.

“Out of ten motorcycles, five usually make it through,” he said, describing how standard FPVs first clear entry points before a fiber-optic drone flies directly into dugouts, forcing immediate evacuation.

In one instance, a fiber-optic drone destroyed their shelter after threading its way inside. “Luckily, everyone survived, but once they find you, you have to flee fast,” he said.”

Brilliant, well-written, — and very informative too.

Especially since if you so much as scroll down by an inch, you’ll find out everything you need to know about “Ukraine’s secret weapon against Russia’s drone swarms: a wall of static. It spans 1,500 kilometres, weighs nothing, and kills Russian drones with invisible math.”

Length, weight, possibly location, and above all the method… anything you forgot to add here, love? And is it the same wall that didn’t stand the test after all?

Kirichenko’s article for Euromaidan Press

Sarcasm aside, none of this funny — or exclusive to Kirichenko or the Euromaidan Press.

I’ve long since argued that the Russo-Ukraine war has turned into a bizarre publicity event where each party — be it through YouTube videos, blogs, or tweets — and against all odds of common sense, tries to inform the public the details of what Ukraine will do on the battlefield and beyond.

“It’ll attack from here…”

“It’ll use this…”

“It’ll invest in…”

Naturally, the reasons for such “loose lips” are dead primitive: all this generates views, oftentimes very generous ones. Some people have literally built their careers on the Russo-Ukraine war since 2022, so for them it is a matter of money and fame, both very powerful fuel for indiscriminate decision-making.

If that attempt to seek money and fame comes in the form of a provocative infographic showing Russia’s losses in Pokrovsk, — which is, may I remind you, the size of Oosterhout, the Netherlands (yes, you’ll have to google that and no, Russia still hasn't conquered it), — then there’s hardly any harm in that.

But not so much when you inform the whole world of the tactical failures of the Ukrainian army, severely outmanned and outgunned, in great detail — or of Ukraine’s plans to ramp up certain types of warfare.

A good example of the latter is the 2022 article titled “A Game of Drones: Ukraine builds up UAV fleet” by Igor Kossov of the Kyiv Independent.

Here’s what it says:

“If the Ukrainian armed forces have their way, this is only the beginning. The goal now is to have drones and skilled operators in “every platoon, every battalion, every brigade,” a Ukrainian Armed Forces drone trainer who goes by the callsign Satan told the Kyiv Independent.

“Until recently, we did not realize how important this is, to have ubiquitous drone capacity throughout the armed forces,” Satan admitted. He did not provide his real name for security purposes. “There didn’t use to be a concept that every battalion needs drone operators. There are a lot of battalions that might need not one operator but three or more.”

Igor Kossov’s article for the Kyiv Independent

Beautifully written, isn’t that so?

But let me also ask you this: three years and Russia’s full dominance in drone warfare later, was it really worth screaming from every corner what contributed to Ukraine’s success and what it plans to do with it?

I’ll leave it at that.