The Economist February 19th 2022 BriefingThe Ukraine crisis 19Open-sourceintelligenceWatching the border
O
n february 4thone of the four satel
lites operated by Maxar, a company
based in Colorado which photographs
more than 3m square kilometres of the
Earth every day, took pictures of a Russian
military camp in Rechitsa, Belarus. Rows
of military vehicles were laid out neatly ov
er a thick carpet of snow less than 50km
from the border with Ukraine. On February
14th a sister satellite took another picture
of Rechitsa. The snow had gone; so, too,
had most of the vehicles (see below).
Since the start of the cold war, America
and its natoallies have scrutinised Rus
sian military deployments and move
ments using expensive and often exotic
means of keeping tabs on other people’s
territory such as spy satellites and surveil
lance flights as well as human agents—
means that nobody else could muster.
But civilian observers increasingly have
their own tools. Journalists, academics,
thinktankers, activists and amateur en
thusiasts have access to a range of opensource intelligence, or osint, capabilities
that have expanded hugely over the past
decade, and that let them reach their own
conclusions about what the world’s armed
forces are doing. Images and other data
from commercial satellites, videos posted
on social media, ship and aircrafttrack
ing websites and other publicly available,
if sometimes arcane, sources can reveal
goings on in inaccessible places like Re
chitsa in unprecedented detail, and some
times nearly in real time. Russia’s military
buildup on the borders of Ukraine is a
comingout party for the possibilities
osint now offers.
As Stephen Wood of Maxar notes, this is
partly because the satellites in the private
sector have improved “dramatically”. His
firm’s satellites can take photographs that
are sharp enough to make out objects as
small as 30cm. The number of providers
has jumped sharply, too. (The Economist
has relied on both Maxar and Planet, a
company in California, to monitor the Rus
sian buildup over recent weeks.) But what
has been especially powerful in this crisis
is the combination of timely, accurate sat
ellite pictures with the socialmedia posts
that are pouring out of Russia.
Consider the case of the missing equip
ment at Rechitsa. The satellite imagery
does not show where the weapons and ve
hicles have gone, only that they are miss
ing. But there are other clues. Russian driv
ers are avid users of dashboardmounted
cameras. In recent weeks, these have capLOW EARTH ORBIT
The detail in which Russia’s military build-up and manoeuvres around Ukraine
have been observed is a portent of things to comeRechitsa, Belarus, was host to battalion tactical groups from Russia’s 36th Combined Arms Army. By February 14th they had
largely vanished. A TikTok video (right) suggested that they had not gone home. Source: Maxar, Henry Boyd of IISSing by fear, not guile and the cultivation of
common interests; if he understands Mr
Greene’s 17th Law of Power, he has failed to
master the 18th: “Do not build fortresses to
protect yourself—isolation is dangerous”.
One of Ms Simonyan’s recent barbs was
the observation that, thanks to Russia’s
threats, “Kyiv’s economy has been torn to
shreds. A trivial matter, perhaps, but a grat
ifying one.” In the absence of a fullscale at
tack, Mr Putin can continue to damage Uk
raine with threats, cyberattacks, perhapsthe disabling of some infrastructure.
But Ms Simonyan passes over the fact
that the effects on Russia’s economy have
been noticeable, too, and that while Mr Pu
tin clearly feels a need to show Russians
that their neighbours will not be allowed a
flourishing democracy, most of Russia
sees no benefit from such a demonstra
tion. They want what is good for them
more than what is bad for the West.They
do not want the perpetual prospect ofwar,
nor the sort of state which that implies.n