A freshly announced Russia state ban on its troops using instant messaging platform Discord in Ukraine has likely already impacted Moscow’s forces fighting along the front lines, according to a new assessment.
Russian state news agency Tass reported on Tuesday that Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin’s media watchdog at the helm of censorship in the country, had blocked communications platform Discord, which has 150 million monthly active users, for violating Russian law.
Next month, Jack Teixeira, a Discord chat leader formerly of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, will be sentenced after pleading guilty to a massive leak of classified U.S. national security documents online.
Discord had been a key tool in Russia’s military arsenal to coordinate fighters along the Ukrainian front lines, including carrying out drone operations, the U.S.-backed think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Wednesday.
Access to Discord would be “restricted in connection of violation of requirements of Russian laws, compliance with which is required to prevent the use of the messenger for terrorist and extremist services, recruitment of citizens to commit them, for drug sales, and in connection with unlawful information posting,” according to a statement from the watchdog, published by Tass news agency.
The San Francisco-based company was fined just over $36,000, Tass reported. Newsweek has emailed Discord for comment.
AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky
“This ban will likely impede some Russian military communications on the front line in the near term,” the ISW think tank said. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry via email.
The ban comes off the back of a crackdown by Moscow on devices used by troops in Ukraine, empowering commanders to punish soldiers using cellphones or navigation devices on the battlefield.
The bill, adopted by Russia’s Parliament, was designed to ensure “the safety of military personnel and units,” Andrei Kartapolov, the chairman of Russia’s State Duma Committee on Defense, told Russian media at the time.
“Before banning something, you need to create something else,” Dmitry Rogozin, Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s annexed Zaporizhzhia region, said in July.
Moscow has “failed to establish a secure and effective official communications system for Russian forces to use,” rather than the likes of Discord, the ISW said on Wednesday.
The Russian Defense Ministry “is not trying to provide any alternative to the troops,” one of Russia’s prominent military bloggers said on Tuesday.
However, Moscow’s troops still “have to fight somehow,” said Mikhail Zvinchuk, who runs the influential Rybar channel.
“In the absence of centralized provision of specialized software, the command will use available Western commercial services to organize combat control as they have to fight somehow,” Zvinchuk said. However, data is then “flowing online to where it should not go,” including to NATO-based servers, the military blogger added.
“And then the authorized body is given a command to cut everything off in one fell swoop.”
