A coordinated online campaign has reportedly encouraged users to alter fuel station information on digital maps across Russia, creating confusion among drivers.
The activity involves changing station statuses by marking locations with available fuel as empty or showing closed stations as operational.
Supporters of the campaign claim the effort is designed to disrupt travel decisions, increase uncertainty, and create additional pressure around fuel availability.
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.