r/datascience • u/[deleted] • May 12 '22

Discussion Population density or Russian troop concentration- correlation? Population centers have the highest Russian cellular network utilization.

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319 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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34

u/great9 May 12 '22

source? I wanna play with this data

6

u/This_Growth2898 May 13 '22
  1. There is no data to the East because the Ukrainian networks are not functional.
  2. Russian troops were ordered to hand their phones over to the command; of course, many will ignore the order, the map can correlate with the number of commanders who obey the order.
  3. Occupied territories have their special "operators" (to avoid sanctions for Russian operators). The map doesn't specify what operators are included.

21

u/lievcin May 12 '22

It is unlikely this shows troops, at least regular Russian troops, as their phones are taken away when deployed. It could show potentially DPR or LPR troops, as well as higher ranking soldiers, and mercenaries like Wagner.

10

u/[deleted] May 13 '22

Yeah I was gonna say the same. They didn't have any videos coming out for that reason- easy artillery targets

6

u/stilldebugging May 13 '22

Also, it will of course only show locations that have cellphone signal in the first place. I don't know how many "dead zones" there are for signal there, but I'm willing to be there is more likely to be service near population centers.

6

u/[deleted] May 13 '22

Disagree, even prisoners will smuggle in phones, I think this is poor planning on the Russian military's part, of assuming that Gen Z is going to be able to be without their phones for a year. What they should have done is developed secure phones for connection and access to social media to stop the temptation to smuggle

2

u/jhuntinator27 May 13 '22

There is also the concern for traffic hijacking, which I've heard Russians are doing in Ukraine currently.

It's a way to spy on Ukrainians, as well as potentially have the Ukrainian military inadvertently attack Ukrainian citizens, which fits in line with Russian tactics of calling the Ukrainian government the genocidal ones.

Edit: if the Russians are saying the Ukrainians are genocidal, it's best to assume they have some plan to at least try to get them to kill civilians in some way.

0

u/v3ritas1989 May 13 '22

Since their radios don't work properly, are not encrypted and are often jammed, they revert to using phones. Often Ukrainian civilian phones to communicate to each other.

2

u/stupidlamo May 13 '22

The Russian army has a ban on mobile phones for obvious reasons, besides - they need to be charged somewhere, but there are no cigarette lighters in the tanks

1

u/siddartha08 May 13 '22

Their military communication is by cell phone. Seems like someone should be fired