Putin bans Russian troops in Ukraine from social media over ‘uncomfortable truths’

Russian soldiers have been banned from using social media on the frontline because of “uncomfortable truths” about their actions in Ukraine, Ukrainian intelligence has claimed.

The deputy commander of Russia’s western military district ordered officers to restrict troops’ use of social media, the Telegraph reported.

This is because field commanders complained about the impact of Kyiv’s “false information”, said the GUR, Ukraine’s main military intelligence agency.

“Commanders of all ranks in a number of units have faced opposition from personnel expressing dissatisfaction with the conduct of the special military operation in Ukraine.

The main sources of such information are from the internet,” the body claimed, after purporting to have obtained a Russian document.

The document blames an increase in activity by Ukrainian military propaganda units in response to the “success of the Russian armed forces,” stopping short of pointing the finger at troops realising the truth of Putin’s bloody invasion.

The Ukrainians, it said, are trying to “influence on historical memory (distortion of historical facts of Russian history)” and “manipulate opinions”, as well as “distribute false information about events and the situation” in the war zone.

The purported document also complained that Russian troops have revealed sensitive information like their personal details and the location of units on messaging apps.

The document said: “In light of this, the ministry of defence in conjunction with colleagues at the centre for information countermeasures has decided to create an inter-agency commission for working with personnel on the internet; increase control of personnel and monitoring of changes in their moral-psychological conditions.”

It followed up with an order to “limit the access of personnel to the internet from personal mobile devices with advanced multimedia capabilities.”

It’s reported that unit commanders do daily sweeps of troops’ social media in a bid to find any sensitive information that may have been shared there. This follows reports that the morale is draining out of Russian soldiers as they realise Putin’s claims of invading Ukraine in a bid to “de-nazify” it are bogus.

“You can feel the morale draining out of Russian soldiers as they learn the reality of their invasion,” said garage owner Adam Ennis, a rookie soldier from Scotland who joined the Ukrainian frontline effort.

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