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Digital warfare reaches fuel maps as Ukrainian users create confusion across Russia
(www.techradar.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2026
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Eh, I find it petty. The fact that there are gas shortages is already enough of a blow. But this to me sounds to be as much "warfare" as scam calling Russian grandmas to convince them to sell their apartments and donate to AFU. Just gives Russian people even more reasons to blame Ukraine, less reasons to trust Ukrainians, and making the life of (surprisingly unclear amount) of them living in Russia even harder. I'm rather dumbfounded at why people are seemingly in support of such actions, as I don't see how it could in any way be beneficial for Ukraine. Best case scenario is couple of Petrovichs are late to work at their drone factories. Worst case are mass arrests of Ukrainians and pro-Ukraine Russians who blew their cover for nothing.
The people of Ukraine are having their homes destroyed, their families murdered, and their children kidnapped
The people of Russia don't have gasoline
This is indeed terrible, but do you imply that everything Ukraine does now is fair game because of it? Would you also cheer them on if they openly used chemical weapons, tortured POW's, and terrorized Russian citizens and nationals?
I'm not an expert on international law or human rights, but I think posting fake gas prices and " used chemical weapons, tortured POW's, and terrorized Russian citizens and nationals" are in slightly different categories.
Of course bad faith arguments usually don't hold water...
Are they?
Only the magnitude is (and yes, a lot) different, but category is very much the same.
Yes they are. Read the full snippet, not just the highlighted bit. The "Its primary intent is [...] To further a terrorist group organization's objectives"
God you're dumb. You're almost cyber terrorizing Lemmy!
No you.
Do I instill fear, panic, or physical disruption of your critical infrastructure?
What's your point? How does that absolve the action out of this definition. Speak it out.
Is a website that collects crowdsorced gas prices critical infrastructure? It feels that you trolling and they trolling of just... Trolling. It's not even hacking! Are review bombs on steam or google maps cyber terrorism?
My point is that you can't cherry pick a few words from a definition and call it a day. Same as you can't try to deviate from your original comparison that posting fake gas prices is like torture.
I'm going to walk back the dumb comment. You're smart enough to see when you're saying dumb things and to try to spin to a different direction. Just not smart enough to realize you said something dumb until after you post it.
Although is you need me to spell it out further, I might have to walk back my walk back :)
It can be. I won't post anymore AI slop screenshots, but I'm sure you are grown up enough to be able to type "review bomb legal" into your search engine of choice and find for yourself.
...my fucking messages
R3?
Please keep posting AI, it at least gives an excuse for being slop.
Good luck finding gas. I'll try to "terrorize" you with some fake prices. You can in return cyber terrorize me with downvotes or silly trolling attempts.
Edited map does not really create fear or disruption of critical infrastructure, and I'm not sure about panic either
Russia invaded their country. As far as I'm concerned anything they do is fair game until every Russian soldier is off their land.
You seriously just doubled down that "anything" includes torture and violation of international law. Even when it does not benefit the war effort whatsoever? What is wrong with you?
Russia invaded their land and killed their citizens without cause. If you want to bitch about violating international law, bitch about that. As far as I'm concerned the defending can do whatever they have to do to end the threat as long as it stops when the invading force leaves. Ukraine didn't start this conflict.
Here we go, you've finally you've said it, it's not really anything, was it? Of course there is an asterisk.
Now thats cleared up, lets go back to the original comment. Does posting misinformation on community gas maps do anything to end the threat? How? I'll remind you that it does not affect military in any capacity as they dont use public gas stations.
It affects the population. Who will get pissed off and start causing trouble at home. Dividing the Russian governments attention. It affects commerce so there's less money moving around, therefore less tax to pay for the war.
As I've said in the other thread, realistically it only diverts from hate towards their own government for failing to protect critical infrastructure, and onto Ukrainian people who went out of their way to ruin someone's day. Realistically, the economic damage is like wasting 10 minutes of a few people who will drive to an empty station, find none, then go to another station. And maybe like an hour of site admins time to ban and clear those trolls out, which I'm pretty sure they already did. And then those annoyed few will open the news and see a written confession from those trolls that they will do absolutely anything to ruin any random russian's day, just because, and cheers from clueless folk in the comments below. Do you think seeing this would rile those russians against Putin, or make them support him even more?
I mean as a parallel situation, Iran closing the straight and raising gas prices for me certainly didn't make me back Trump or dislike Iran more. I blame Trump for that. I think any reasonable person can see that a country who's being invaded doing whatever they can to fuck with the invader is the invader's fault. Maybe not everything will be totally effective but smaller/weaker nations have to get their shots in however they can.
You went a bit short in your analogy. US and Iran are both governments duking it out, and it's completely normal to blame Trump for failing to duke it out in his favor. But what if on top of that and the resulting gas price increases, Iranian activists and supporters decided to, IDK, hack and DDoS EV charger maps or something. You'd be completely reasonable in being more suspicious of your Iranian-American neighbors, remote coworkers, or taxi drivers, be more receptive to anti-immigration policies, as who knows what else they might pull off, and, if you're in position of power, like customs officer, policeman, or just corporate HR, to question them more than others, and as a site admin to just block the entire IP range of the country. This results in life for said Iranians being just a tad more difficult, but they themselves probably fled Ayatollah regime a long time ago and just want to live in piece for once. If that happened I'd condemn it as well and call them shitters too. I myself dislike Israel and could in theory make calls to Israeli businesses and make bomb threats, but then I'd be a shitter myself as this would only make life of my Russian Jew friends more difficult for little economic impact.
How is that any different than making gas prices higher? Both are creating logistic problems for the USA and they're 100% justified in doing so. They're not even doing anything violent like we are to them. I wouldn't blame them one bit. Anything they do is justified, we would all just be facing the consequences of not dealing with Trump during the last administration when they should have. FAFO. Just like Russians are for not dealing with Putin.
As I've said one is about inter-government foreign relations other is matter of individual people. I don't see how there could be a coherent worldview that lumps the two together. It kind of erodes the idea of a difference between military and civilian targets, and also makes all terrorism completely justified. It could only be viable in a world where every single country is a fascist enthnostate, where if your state is at war with another, then every national of that country is your personal enemy.
I kinda vaguely get your idea that without Trump and Putin none of this would've ever happened, but what you're suggesting as a right course of action, which I assume is to attempt to forcefully depose a leader whenever they do dumb shit, this means not only civil wars throughout the world, but given your implication that foreigners are allowed to join in the action, a full on WW3 that'd never end. I'd rather live in current state of affairs where only a few countries fight each other with at most a million soldiers and the remaining billions of people living mostly peacefully and chill with each other, over a world where everyone always takes direct action against anyone involved in any group that ever wronged them, even if indirectly.
This is getting too complex, so let me simplify it: If me, you, an Iranian and Ukrainian meet somewhere, none of us should punch each other, nor vandalize each other's property, steal from, nor try to mislead or scam each other, even if we disagree with each other or with each other's government's actions. Neither we should cheer or stay inactive if either one of us does any of those things. If someone agrees with their government actions they are free to join their respective countries military. If not we could pressure our respective governments directly through votes, legal actions, representatives and whatnot, and through positions and stakes at our companies, to stop the offending and provide aid to the victims. We could all go volunteer and donate to charities in any of the countries, and we could even organize ones in our respective ones. We could boycott offending countries, and support victim countries economies together. We could even realistically all join victim's state's foreign legions, but this is a bit iffy by my books. And we definitely shouldn't go Al-Quaeda flying planes into buildings, for any reason, ever, no matter the amount of victims or the potential economic impact, I hope at least that we can agree is peak shittery.
One thing I would like to add, I've talked about this years before, but I guess with NATO troops in Ukraine now being completely out of the picture, the equation of the outcome of this war boils down to Ukraine's budget and Ukraine's headcount versus Russia's budget and Russia's headcount. And despite that, it's largely independent of Ukraine. Let me clarify: The only way balance the headcount given the Ukraine's smaller population, is to reduce the Russia's headcount, which it still is balanced out by majority of Russia's population unwillingness to participate in this unjust war, not by disproportionate KIA as propagandists on both sides might say, really it's been floating in 1-1.2 range. So better keep it that way and not piss them off needlessly, as every time a bunch of NAFO fucks joke about meatcubes or something, somewhere in Russia someone joins the army. Yes, Z fucks do that as well but for the same exact reason it's to their own detriment. On the budget part, Ukraine's economy is completely fucked, 50% of revenue coming from foreign aid, which is still not enough tbh, but to at least keep it coming they better not commit any atrocities, you've said you'd find them justifiable given the situation, but someone else might not, and given how every penny counts, they wisely do not. But do buy Ukrainian products if you can, it really does go a long way. On the other hand, Russian budget is roughly 28% fuel exports, 45% VAT and other business taxes, 20% personal taxes and 7% rest, which all goes 32% to war and 8% to cops. It was already squeezed hard by sanctions and companies relocating voluntarily, which has lead to the current stalemate as Russia can't really afford any more guns or people, and it can be squeezed even further by even more sanctions, diplomacy with third countries that are still buying and/or engaging in re-barelling, developing alternate fuel sources/routes, and, counterintuitively, by helping Russians get out of Russia so that they don't pay VAT and income taxes to Putin. It hits very hard and is effective, and none of it involves direct sabotage or pissing them off. On the contrary, countries like Georgia and Armenia have boosted their GDP quite significantly since 2022 with minimal inflation in no small part due to influx of Russians and Russian companies. Imagine if Ukraine allowed them in, two birds one stone as they say, empty Putin's coffers and put in Zelensky's, but, very much understandably, not going to happen. Don't take it as me begging to let Russians in either, me and my friends already landed places to stay :P Just dreaming of one day where this does happen and some wannabe warmonger finds themselves with no people, no money, no manufacturing, and all their yesterday's income going to their now enemy, that'd be hilarious.
God did I went on a tangent, and yet haven't mentioned NGO's, why RDK/LSR failed, astroturfing and troll factories, CIA and state hackers, etc, but I think that's enough rambling for today as is.
When under attack, there is no "enough of a blow". Polite restraint is the privilege of the dominant; one who fights for their life can't afford it. Anything that disrupts the aggressor's will or ability to continue their aggression is fair game.
The only consideration is whether it's worth the cost. In case of messing with that map, the cost is trivially low. Might as well hope that it undermines support for the war effort. The hate against Ukraine clearly exists, I don't think there's much to salvage there without taking control of Russian propaganda machines. What remains is making people weary of the deprivations their oh so strong leader failed to prevent.
In this conflict, it would appear that Ukraine is demonstrating more polite restraint than Russia. Targeting energy to erode political support for the war - in the Summer as opposed to the past 4 winters where Russia has done the same to Ukraine.
"Polite restraint" here is a political tool. It signals to outside observers that you're not out for blood and brutality, which isn't just a moral point but also an economic calculation: If you're interested in long-term trade with a given economic area, a brutal and destructive government just doesn't instill as much confidence in stable and reliable agreements. Brutality is more likely to galvanise resistance and lead to future instability, trade disruptions etc.
A party that makes a point of demonstrating adherence to some international standards of "polite" warfare, no matter how performative those standards are, is just a more attractive trading partner. If they'll abide by those norms and (partially unwritten) agreements, that is an indicator they'll also abide by whatever contracts and agreements you make in the future.
In a way, it's circular: they show polite restraint to demonstrate their willingness to prioritise the values it signals over petty vengeance.
There is also strategic value, both in avoiding the type of galvanised resistance I alluded to above by taking it slow and in gradually building up a "new (worse) normal" for the opponent's populace, such that the relief of peace will feel like an improvement and thereby make that peace more popular.
Of course, moral considerations will also play a part, but international relations unfortunately don't often indulge in the luxury of morality for it's own sake. It just happens to be a desirable byproduct sometimes.
The images and stories coming out of Ukraine seem hard to view as anything other than brutal. Blowing up houses while people sleep?
Does it, though? Lived in Russia most of my life and not once I saw army vehicles at a gas station. Pretty sure they have their own fuel distribution network.
The political will is more than just the army.
If I understood correctly, many Russians are or were in favour of the war, which is hardly surprising while they're not the ones suffering the cost. Even when they do, a populace under the impression that the cost is some sacrifice for a good or necessary war can be quite resilient. And even if they lose faith in the war, there is a certain amount of patience and tolerance.
But the greater that cost becomes, the more that support will erode. The more their lives will be disrupted, the more discontent the regime will have to devote resources to quell or at least smooth over. It probably won't escalate to the point of open revolt unless the regime is particularly inept, but the greater the tensions and pressure, the more the strategic calculations will shift to alleviating these tensions (precisely to avoid revolt).
For people with a little spare time that might not be able to contribute directly, it's a low-barrier way to be at least a bit of a nuisance, amplifying the perceived impact of the shortage in ways propaganda can't so easily handwave away.
Wether such measures have great impact is hard to gauge, particularly while starting but also often in retrospect, because social pressure and dynamics are complicated, war is messy and emotions are hard to calculate. But if it utilises a previously untapped resource (by mobilising people willing to troll the Russian populace), it's worth a shot.
I'd like to close my argument with a note on strategic commumication: You are absolutely right that keyboard warriors risk far less than actual "might get blown to chunks" fighters. But what does calling it out achieve? Does it help the soldiers to know their international support is useless? Does it help the misguided to tell them they're worthless? Do you expect those you consider cowards to go "you know, that dude is right, let me uproot my life and risk death to volunteer at a front alien to me"?
By encouraging them to keep trying to be a pain in the ass of imperial aggressors, you might recruit even the reluctant, the lazy, the cowardly to become a sort of "digital guerilla". They might not be of much use now, but the more people look for places to sting, the greater the chance that someone will find a place where it does actually hurt. Better to have them try something than do nothing.
If that means patting them on the back and going "Sure buddy, you're helping, keep doing your thing", that's worth more than demanding all or nothing from them.
Not quite. Russians for the most part just want to be left the fuck alone. The ones that do support it only do because TV is their only source of information and their support is limited to calling foreign leaders names in their kitchens and shitposting on facebook and whatsapp to their information deprived peers. When the push comes to shove they would only ever accept the duty if they were too lazy to find a way out. So most people on the front line are either criminals or gamblers who don't really have a choice.
I feel like it does the opposite by diluting a definitive victory:
Oil refinery got blown up which led to fuel shortages - "fucking Putin and his cronies can't keep their shit together, couldn't spare an AA from one of their villas to protect critical infrastructure, fuck them".
I'm late to work because I had to spend 10 more minutes going to a different station because someone posted misinformation - "fucking Ukrainians trying to ruin my day again, fuck them, maybe Putin was onto something...".
The difference is: one action is directed by the government at a government, the other - at the people by the people.
What I think really happens is that people who were assholes just gotten an excuse to be assholes. I'd like to be proven wrong, but I'm yet to see anything actually good come out of NAFO and the likes. So far they've only managed to turn quite a few anti-war Russians against directly supporting Ukraine, by means of afforementioned scam calls, harrassment of opposition leaders and of people in neutral countries. It's especially appalling to see coming from able-bodied young men who clearly fled conscription, and I'd like to counter the argument by saying that we shouldn't encourage nor cheer laziness and pure national hatred. After all, they don't have to go to the meat grinder, there are quite a lot of opportunities far behind the frontlines, I honestly would've probably gone myself if I were allowed and not for the severe consequences of it.
There will be some who have this reaction, but it takes one hell of a PR spin to make them think that the Ukranians, after 4 years of siege and bombings throughout their territory, aren't justified in whatever payback they might be able to give.
It elevates the Ukranian people from "irrelevant, has no impact on me" to something to at least think about.
Why so? I think it's the intent that matters more than the magnitude. As Russian, I cheer whenever Ukraine bombs military targets on Russia's territory (or anything that's boosting Russia's GDP for that matter) and I find US's ban on doing that to be outright criminal. A drone blew up an apartment building in my home city with no military targets in sight, and I truly believe it was a result of miscalculation, jamming or some other fault, same with Russian drones on Kiyv and cluster munitions dropped on Donbas. But don't you dare spit in my coffee while we're both sit in the same boat as refuges of war in Tbilisi, and I'm not going to shit through anyone's car sunroof regardless if the plate says RU or UA either. Planting national tensions is exactly what Putin wants, just so that he could one day say "Look, they're all assholes, let's go fuck em up" and call for full on proper mobilization instead of tiptoeing with partial ones.
You mean nukes? Our (US side) propaganda implies that full on proper mobilization happened 4 years ago and Russia is out of non-nuclear options.
The september 2022 one? It was yet another of Putin's half measures. By law he can't call for mobilization without declaring war, which, you know, he didn't. It was a legally undefined "special military operation" . Therefore, the mobilization was as well only a "partial mobilization" to test waters, which nonetheless caused massive uproar throughout the country. The regional administrations just barely managed to scrape by and fulfill the required 300k soldier quota and quell down the protests, after which they abandoned the idea. Since then most new soldiers are lured into contract service through:
Deception - bro pls sign this contract pls bro I promise u wont storm trenches bro just pilot the drone bro, far back beyond frontlines bro... - except for smalltext clearly saying that if you're shit at it or fail training you'll get reassigned to other units that just happen to storm trenches and with no way out of it. Except for a lucky few that now have to travel between colleges and universities, face students laughing in their faces, and try to convince them to sign up as well. And if they fail to, they themselves go back storming enemy trenches.
Absurdly high (by Russian standards) signing bonuses, salaries and death/injury compensations. Something in the likes of $50k signing, $3k/mo and with various bonuses you can rack up something like $100k a year, up to $200k if you get killed, while average Ivan just barely survives on $500-1000/mo (if he got any job at all). This put a huge strain on Russia's economy, but it somehow, just barely, is still holding on, though the prices are ridiculous at this point.
Recruiting criminals, which makes it a lot more dangerous to live there when there are killers on the loose, some who did a couple rounds of murdering and trading their decade long sentences into year-long warzone trips
North Korea (and other poor countries)
Otherwise, no, Russia still has a lot of manpower. Not me, nor my friends, nor my relatives, nor friends relatives or relatives friends got called in or served voluntarily. Except for one guy I only saw once who was a gambling addict, got into severe debt, did a trip, drove a supply truck back and forth for a year, returned, repaid all the debts, and, addicted to easy money, went back for a second round and immediately got blown up. RIP bozo.
US recruitment tactics during Vietnam (and even after) weren't far from this.
When I was in college in the 1980s they offered to pay my full tuition and other expenses ($40K/yr) in exchange for a 2 year tour on a submarine. Didn't sound like a good deal to me.
In Vietnam, my dad had a friend who did one tour that went pretty easy (by luck) as special forces recon, dropped behind enemy lines to look around, then evacuated by helicopter after a couple of hours. He was so chuffed about being a super soldier he went back for a 2nd tour and actually got shot at that time, he survived - no physical injuries, but he's deeply mentally scarred for life - has a series of ex-wives who used him for his veterans' benefits to get their teeth straightened (no lie: 4 sets of braces within 10 years) then they'd leave him. He finally went hermit in a cabin in the mountains.
Back around to modern times (which are not very different), we have a neighbor who went to Iraq - lost both legs, now he's living on benefits and has a bad-news woman who he somehow doesn't kick out who's sponging off of his benefits while abusing him, both strung out on drugs, woman has another boyfriend he openly knows about, cops doing crime scene investigations around their house a couple of times a year... it's not a great thing for society.
Our US side propaganda paints the manpower issue for Russia's Ukraine adventure as scraping the bottom of the recruitment barrel - 30K Russian casualties per month, forced conscription feeding the frontlines through loopholes in the laws that say they can't do that, etc. I'm very glad we're not stuck in Afghanistan / Iraq anymore, that was a huge waste of good people over 9 years - peaking at 170,000 deployed - they say. Our news says Russia has over 720,000 pairs of boots on the ground in Ukraine, with a homeland population half that of the US. That has to hurt a lot, and it's going to continue to hurt for several generations.