The smartphone war: Soldiers, civilians and satellites give the world a window onto Russian invasion

A month and a half into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we’ve become so used to the steady stream of videos and images coming from the front lines that it's easy to forget it's not the norm to have a ringside seat to war unless you're fighting in it.

Soldiers sharing cellphone video of missile attacks as they happen; residents posting footage of military units occupying their towns in real time and live streaming from bomb shelters; government officials tweeting drone video of destroyed tank columns and downed aircraft.

All amplified over thousands of Telegram channels, Twitter feeds and TikTok accounts around the world.

“People are basically acting as war reporters, but it's by the tens of thousands,” said Samuel Bendett, a research analyst and Russia expert at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Va. “This war is playing out on our smartphones in ways that no other conflicts probably have so far.”

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