Kathrine Frich
Communication is as critical as weapons and ammunition in modern warfare.
Orders, warnings, and coordination can mean the difference between holding a position and losing it.
But on Ukraine’s front line, not every tool designed to connect people is considered safe and one everyday device is treated as a serious threat.
Communications under fire
Despite harsh conditions, frontline units are rarely cut off from command. Military radios remain the backbone of communication, even in encircled or occupied areas.
According to Glavkom, Lyubomyr Mikalo, a soldier of the 103rd Separate Territorial Defense Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a Hero of Ukraine, described how his unit maintained contact during 42 continuous days in an encircled area of the Sumy region.
“We took the antenna cable out of the basement onto the street, hanging it one and a half meters above the ground so that there would be more or less some kind of connection. There were one or two cases when the connection was lost because the enemy was probably interfering with it,” said Ljubomir.
Even improvised solutions, he noted, were safer than relying on civilian devices.
No calls from the front
Direct contact with family was deliberately avoided. Mikalo stressed that this was a matter of security, not choice.
“Personal phones should not be taken to the position at all. This does not mean that the defenders on the front line lose all contact with home. Before going to the position, I asked the commander for permission to give his phone number to my wife, just in case.”
Messages were passed indirectly through fellow soldiers. “Everything is fine with us. Please tell the wives that everything is fine, we are holding on,” he recalled telling comrades.
“There was no direct connection so that we could hear each other, unfortunately.”
Life without rotation
Extended deployments without relief are not uncommon. As previously reported by Unian, Oleksandr Tyshayev of Ukraine’s Special Operations Command spent more than six months on the front line without rotation.
Under constant shelling and drone threats, he and his partner rationed water and food delivered mainly by drones. Hygiene was limited to wet wipes.
Tyshayev said they slept in shifts, waited for weather suitable for rotation, and repeatedly remained in place because they believed it was too dangerous to move.
Sources: Glavkom, Unian, LA.LV
