Putin Had To Reportedly 'Scale Back' After Jammers Installed For Ukraine Disrupted Russia's Own Systems

In the early days of the Russia-Ukraine war, Vladimir Putin‘s forces suffered “electronic fratricide” after Russian jammers installed for disrupting Ukraine’s air-defense radars and communications links jammed their own communications.

What Happened: The problem became so critical that the Russian army had to stop disrupting Ukrainian communications after their forces could not communicate effectively, a new study by U.K. thinktank, the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, revealed. 

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After Putin's electronic warfare jammed their own communications, it “became a greater threat to the Russian operation than Ukrainian [surface-to-air missile] systems, so their electronic warfare assets began to greatly scale back their operations after the first two days,” the report added.

For years, the White House has worried it lags far behind the Kremlin in electronic-warfare capabilities. And Nick Reynolds, a coauthor of the RUSI study, told Business Insider that Russian electronic-warfare systems “have actually proven extremely effective.”

“During the first week of the invasion, Russian electronic warfare using jamming equipment and E-96M aerial decoys were highly effective in disrupting” Kyiv's ground-based air-defense systems, the report added.

It severely disrupted Ukrainian S-300 and SA-11 surface-to-air-missile batteries north of Kyiv and allowed Russia to launch extensive ballistic- and cruise-missile strikes on war-torn nation's long-range radars and anti-aircraft batteries. But as Putin's army's advance began to bog down, they discovered that they had “no coherent communications plan.”

Meanwhile, Russian troops fighting the war in Ukraine are “struggling with the military realities” in the Luhansk region, as per U.K.’s Intelligence.

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