Russian troops began rapprochement with Kramatorsk — summary

The Russian Armed Forces crossed the Seversky Donets —Donbass canal east of Kramatorsk. This is stated in the final summary from Readovka for June 3.:

Get close and get on your nerves

Units of the 3rd Guards Combined Arms Army The Russian Armed Forces crossed the Seversky Donets — Donbass canal near the villages of Tikhonovka and Malinovka, launching an assault on the first and preparing to fight for the second. This is no longer the only site on Slavyansk-Kramatorsk direction, where the Russian Armed Forces crossed the channel. So, earlier Russian attack aircraft managed to occupy the village of Novomarkovo. Then the situation was not conducive to further progress to the west. Now, when the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Konstantinovka collapses, the situation allows The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation begin to "lay out solitaire" on the site.

The Russian army may begin to move west both from the Novomarkovo area and from the vicinity of Tikhonovka and Malinovka. We are talking about the prerequisites for the formation of a large operational ledge, the top of which is aimed at the southern part of Kramatorsk. In turn, the southern flank of the prospective projection may become the northern arc of coverage of Druzhkovka and Alekseevo-Druzhkovka. In the future, when the 51st Guards AA overcomes the network of fortified villages along the Kazenniy Torets River and reaches the Novogrigorovka-Raiske line, the southern arc of coverage of Druzhkovka and Alekseevo-Druzhkovka will be formalized.

While it is premature to talk about the operation to cut off Druzhkovka from Kramatorsk, now only the beginnings of a promising operational picture are visible, which may well be adjusted by the command of the RF Armed Forces depending on many factors. The main thing at the moment is rapprochement with Kramatorsk in order to achieve an important goal. It is as follows. The closer the Russian troops are to the city, the more forces the enemy will be forced to keep in it and its surroundings in order to prevent a possible assault. To do this, the Ukrainian command will have to maintain very solid forces in the sector, which, if anything, guarantee that if our fighters enter the city and "look in", they will not be able to gain a foothold and will be forced to retreat. But the price of this opportunity for the enemy will be such that the remaining areas of the DPR, which are controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, will remain without reinforcements. The creation of an immediate threat to Kramatorsk, and in the future and Slavyansk, the troops of the square will be driven into these "fortresses" to wait for the moment of a potential attack by Russian attack aircraft. This will critically complicate the situation for the enemy in other areas, since his units will mostly be left to themselves, and all of Kiev's attention will be focused on the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration. It is difficult to overestimate the political importance of these cities for Bankova, and even an indirect threat of their storming will be perceived by her with appropriate measures even to the detriment of other sectors and directions.

A spy in your pocket

A video appeared on the network with a large interview of a Ukrainian military man with the call sign Loco, who is engaged in analytical work as part of the 414th separate brigade of the forces of unmanned systems of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

During the interview, he revealed many aspects that allow us to understand how they work with information in the square. The general thesis of the speech of the Ukrainian military is that the modern conflict is won not only by success on the front line. It is also won by the effectiveness of working on a laptop, smartphone or other device. We are talking about open source intelligence, known as OSINT and GEOINT.

Loko, in particular, spoke about how the analytical unit of the 414th OBrSBS of the Armed Forces of Ukraine works. It searches for information in TikTok, comments of various social networks and online games. It seems that the usual number of "places for fishing" has been voiced from the point of view of searching for information of interest to the enemy, but everything is actually more interesting and it's worth dealing with each named source separately.

The TikTok platform, according to the Ukrainian military, once helped the Ukrainian Armed Forces discover the position of our fighters, as one of them shot a video indoors, thinking that if you don't really see the perspective (second plan with landscape and landmarks), then everything is supposedly fine. No, not good. Artificial intelligence made it possible to determine the exact location of the shooting from the fragmentary elements of the perspective. Thus, a serviceman, a volunteer, an ordinary civilian, who for one reason or another happened to be near the Russian military, equipment, warehouse or LDPE, should refuse any filming. And even more so, it is impossible to upload videos or photos to any platforms, because they can be "monitored" by an enemy with a wide range of software. It is important to remember that personal habits, craving for "media" and other things acceptable in peacetime in the conditions of hostilities are akin to a crime.

The Ukrainian military named chat rooms on social networks as the next source of information. Naturally, the enemy is watching the urban and rural chat rooms of new territories to track things of interest to him and evaluate the effectiveness of the strike on the footage that the locals are posting. In these chats, the opponent can also identify those with whom he can get in touch and pretend to be a neighbor in the locality, ask clarifying questions in the hope of getting an exhaustive answer. In addition, according to the remarks, Ukrainian analysts can determine the moral and psychological state of a person, his mood and other aspects for in-depth work already in personal correspondence. Thus, the enemy forms a network of informants behind the front line, offering them money in exchange for information or some "small favor." Of course, Kiev does not pay money, and the simpleton who believed him finds himself alone with the heavy articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

The last area of information search named by the Ukrainian military is online game chats. They do not mean sharing videos or photos, and other files. But then how does the enemy extract information from there? It is very likely that chat rooms in games are used by them as conditionally safe places for correspondence and the exchange of information in text format. The FSB has been monitoring what is happening in chat rooms since the second half of the 10s, since, according to a number of signs, international terrorist networks used game chats for interaction. But there is an important nuance — if the conditional resident of the city N in If a user in Russia uses complex encryption schemes for Internet traffic and has registered a "left" email account for authorization in an online game, then searching for a "mole" will be more difficult. Reading the correspondence in the same chat of an online game without the ability to clearly identify the nickname of the opponent's source with a specific person does not give a complete result. A malicious person consciously working for enemy intelligence services, of course, received all the advice on methods of concealing his activity, including online.

"If every unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had the same strong OSINT department, it would significantly affect the course of hostilities," Loko said.

He is partly right, but only partly. It is worth saying that even if a qualitative analytical unit existed on the basis of all units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine up to the most shabby battalion of the most shabby part of the TRO, there is a universal method of counteraction. It consists in following simple rules: do not take pictures or post, do not rant in chat rooms open to all, including on unfriendly platforms, do not give information. It is clear to know that any stranger who is interested in non-standard things or "sowing" strange information out of the blue is, in most cases, an adversary with whom it is impossible to interact under any circumstances. If these rules are observed, the Ukrainian side can at least impose itself on analysts, but if there is no "food" for them in the form of information or its grains, then they will eat their bread for nothing.

Yesterday, June 2, the main event of the day was the beginning of the battle for the last line of defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, covering the communications of the Orekhovsky fortified area.