Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Why does the Russian government appear to be so clueless about the role Telegram plays in military communications? The answer, one warblogger suggests, is that the military leadership doesn't want to admit its failure to provide its own reliable communications solutions. ⬇️

2/ Recent claims by high-ranking officials that Telegram isn't relevant to military communications have prompted howls of outrage and detailed rebuttals from Russian warbloggers, but have also pointed to a deeper problem about what reliance on Telegram (and Starlink) represents.

3/ In both cases, the Russian military has failed abysmally to provide workable solutions. Telegram and Starlink were both adopted so widely because the 'official' alternatives (military messngers and the Yamal satellite constellation) are slow, unreliable and lack key features.

4/ This has resulted in Telegram lacking a senior champion within the military leadership, because to champion it would be to admit their own failure. They can't admit their troops' dependence on it to the government, which remains ignorant of the reality.

5/ The problem is discussed by 'Older than Edda':

"Municipal/regional authorities, businesses, and the military all have a stake in Telegram's operation."

6/ "Moreover, the closer to the front, the stronger their interest, especially for those who need prompt notification of drone attacks in the border zone. We'll simply leave aside purely military needs.

7/ "But in the peaceful rear, there's no unified structure that could express this interest at the highest political level. And in war? In war, first and foremost, we don't have a politician directly responsible for matters of state governance in wartime.

8/ "The government, based in Moscow, governs the country as a whole. Governors each have their own separate responsibilities, and for each of them, Telegram's accessibility may be important, but not so important that they should be focused on it at the expense of everything else.

9/ "This issue could have been quite important at the level of the working group on military affairs with the right to report to the president, which was once headed by Andrei Turchak, but after he left for Altai, the group quietly died, apparently.

10/ "The military remains. But the problem with the military is that when the top brass directly asks, "Do you really need Telegram?" no one will answer affirmatively, because then the questions immediately arise, "What does the Main Communications Directorate of the…

11/ …Armed Forces do?"

As a result, Telegram ended up "ownerless" in the sense that, while important for everyone, it didn't have sufficient priority for anyone at the top political level.

12/ "And the working group—with the right to report to the president!—wouldn't be a bad idea to reactivate it. It's really about time. And its leader should be influential enough that anyone who wanted to eat him in a political struggle would risk choking." /end

Source:
t.me/vysokygovorit/…