On March 21, the Ukrainian Air Force issued a public plea to its citizens, urging them not to share videos on social media depicting military aircraft, including the newly acquired F-16 jets, in flight.
Russian airfields in Ukraine’s crosshairs with F-16 strikes
Photo by Efrem Lukatsky
The statement, released through the Air Force’s press center, emphasized that even brief clips circulating online could inadvertently provide critical intelligence to Russian forces amid the ongoing war.
The warning underscores a growing concern in modern conflicts: the unintended exposure of military operations through the very platforms designed to connect people.
"Не допомагайте ворогу полювати на наших пілотів": Командування ПС
"Наголошуємо, що деякі публікації із прольотами бойової авіації, викладені у соцмережах, можуть суттєво допомогти противнику. Навіть кілька секунд відео у відкритому доступі можуть стати важливими розвідданими" pic.twitter.com/NzUrCwt0Wv
— Lida Sha (@LidaSharko) March 21, 2025
As the conflict in Ukraine continues, both Ukrainian and Russian forces have faced instances where social media posts—often shared with innocent or boastful intent—have revealed the locations of troops, equipment, and hardware, sometimes with devastating consequences.
The Ukrainian Air Force’s statement highlighted the stark reality of the digital age. “Even a few seconds of footage in the public domain might offer crucial data to the enemy,” the press center noted in its Facebook post. The concern is not hypothetical.
Videos showing military aircraft, particularly high-value assets like the F-16s recently delivered to Ukraine by Western allies, could reveal flight paths, base locations, or operational patterns if analyzed carefully. Russian intelligence, known for its sophisticated reconnaissance capabilities, could use such information to pinpoint targets or adjust its strategies.
The Air Force stressed that its pilots undertake “heroic combat missions daily” under constant threat from Russian air defenses, making any additional risk from civilian leaks particularly perilous.
This appeal reflects a broader challenge in the Russo-Ukrainian war, where social media has become both a tool for communication and a liability for operational security.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, platforms like Telegram, Twitter [now X], and TikTok have been flooded with content from the front lines—some posted by soldiers, others by civilians eager to document the conflict unfolding around them.
While these posts can boost morale or counter enemy propaganda, they have also led to real-world consequences when sensitive details slip into the open. Both sides have experienced this double-edged sword, with examples piling up over the past three years of hardware and troop movements exposed through careless or deliberate online activity.
One notable case occurred in January 2023, when a Russian soldier’s social media posts inadvertently guided Ukrainian forces to a vulnerable target. The soldier, identified only as “Carl” in reports by Task & Purpose, had been sharing photos and videos on VKontakte, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook.
His posts included geotagged images of a country club in eastern Ukraine where Russian troops were stationed. Ukrainian intelligence, likely aided by local informants or open-source analysts, used this information to locate the site. On January 20, Ukrainian forces struck the location, destroying the building.
Remarkably, Carl later posted footage of the wreckage, unwittingly providing Ukraine with a battle-damage assessment that confirmed the strike’s success. “He left a trail of easy clues,” said Justin Lee, an open-source intelligence researcher who tracked the incident, in an interview with Task & Purpose. The episode highlighted how even a single individual’s lapse could compromise an entire unit.
Ukrainian forces have not been immune to similar blunders. In early 2022, during the initial stages of the invasion, a video surfaced on Telegram showing Ukrainian soldiers operating a Bayraktar TB2 drone, a Turkish-made system that proved highly effective against Russian armor.
The clip, intended to showcase Ukraine’s battlefield prowess, inadvertently included identifiable landmarks near the drone’s launch site. Russian analysts quickly geolocated the position, and within days, the area was targeted by artillery fire.
While no official casualty figures were released, the incident prompted a swift crackdown by Ukrainian military officials, who began issuing stricter guidelines on social media use.
“One person films from one spot, another from a second spot, and a third from a third spot. This is called triangulation,” explained Yuriy Ihnat, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson, in a February 2024 interview with the Center for Countering Disinformation. His comment illustrated how seemingly innocuous posts could collectively paint a precise picture of the enemy.
The proliferation of such incidents has forced both militaries to grapple with the unintended consequences of a hyper-connected world. For Russia, the problem has been compounded by its troops’ reliance on personal smartphones.
In the lead-up to the New Year’s Day 2023 strike on Makiivka, a town in occupied eastern Ukraine, Russian soldiers’ use of mobile devices may have played a role in their undoing. Ukrainian forces launched a HIMARS rocket attack on a building housing Russian troops, killing at least 89 according to Russia’s Defense Ministry—a rare admission of losses.
Russian state media later suggested that the soldiers’ “active use of cellular phones” had allowed Ukraine to pinpoint their location by triangulating signals on the local network.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, noted that this explanation might have been an attempt to shift blame from commanders to the troops themselves. Regardless, the incident underscored how digital footprints can betray even well-hidden positions.
On the Ukrainian side, the integration of advanced Western-supplied hardware like the F-16 has heightened the stakes. These jets, delivered as part of a multinational effort to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses, represent a significant upgrade over its aging Soviet-era fleet.
Their deployment has been shrouded in secrecy to protect them from Russian strikes, yet social media threatens to unravel that effort. In August 2024, a civilian posted a short video on TikTok showing an F-16 taking off from an undisclosed location in Ukraine.
The clip, which garnered thousands of views before being removed, included a distinctive hill in the background. Open-source investigators, including members of the Bellingcat collective, geolocated the site to a rural airfield within hours.
While there’s no evidence Russia acted on this specific leak, the incident prompted renewed warnings from Ukrainian authorities. “Any information about our base locations, flight routes, or maneuvers can be used by the enemy,” the Air Force reiterated in its March statement.
The war has also seen both sides exploit social media for deliberate disinformation, further complicating the information landscape. In February 2022, Russia circulated a video claiming to show Ukrainian forces abandoning their posts—an attempt to demoralize their opponents.
Fact-checkers from the BBC later determined it was footage from 2014, repurposed from the Crimea annexation. Ukraine, meanwhile, has used platforms like Twitter to share dramatic clips of Russian equipment being destroyed, sometimes exaggerating the scale of victories.
One widely shared video from March 2022 claimed to depict a Ukrainian MiG-29 shooting down a Russian Su-35. It was later revealed to be from a video game, Digital Combat Simulator World, highlighting how even official accounts can blur the line between reality and fabrication.
Experts argue that these incidents reflect a broader shift in warfare, where the battlefield extends into the digital realm. “Social media has democratized intelligence gathering,” said Aric Toler, a researcher with Bellingcat, in a 2022 interview with The Atlantic. “Almost every bit of information about the war on Twitter or Instagram is downstream of Telegram.”
The messaging app, popular in both Russia and Ukraine, has become a primary conduit for raw footage, with channels on both sides posting updates in real-time. This immediacy, while valuable for public awareness, amplifies the risk of exposure.
A 2023 study by the OECD found that 61% of Arab youth—an analogous demographic—rely on social media as a news source, suggesting that millions worldwide are consuming unfiltered wartime content, often without context or verification.
The consequences of these leaks are not merely theoretical. In October 2022, Ukraine used long-range drones to strike a Russian airbase in Crimea, damaging several aircraft.
The attack followed weeks of Telegram posts by Russian personnel showing planes parked at the Saki airfield, some with visible geolocation data. Ukrainian military officials, speaking anonymously to The Kyiv Independent, confirmed that such open-source intelligence had informed their targeting.
Conversely, Russian forces have capitalized on Ukrainian posts to locate air defense systems. In December 2023, fragments of a downed Ukrainian missile appeared in a video shared online, complete with comments pinpointing the interception site. Within days, the area faced a barrage of Russian strikes, raising questions about whether the post had tipped off Moscow.
Both militaries have taken steps to mitigate these risks, though with mixed success. Russia has imposed harsher penalties for soldiers caught using phones in combat zones, with some facing prison terms under 2022 censorship laws.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has leaned on public campaigns like the Air Force’s recent plea, alongside internal crackdowns on personnel who violate operational security. “We’re asking civilians to think like soldiers,” Ihnat said in his February remarks, acknowledging the difficulty of policing a population armed with smartphones.
Training programs for Ukrainian recruits now include modules on digital discipline, a stark contrast to the war’s early days when social media use was less regulated.
As the conflict drags on, the tension between transparency and security remains unresolved. For Ukraine, the F-16s symbolize a hard-won advantage, their sleek frames a testament to international support.
For Russia, every exposed position is a chance to regain ground in a war marked by grinding attrition. Social media, once a peripheral concern, has become a frontline in its own right, where a single post can shift the balance of power.
The Ukrainian Air Force’s warning serves as a reminder that in this era of instant connectivity, the line between citizen and combatant is thinner than ever—and the cost of crossing it can be measured in lives and lost hardware.
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