Starting from January-February of 2015, cell phones in some areas of Luhansk and Donetsk regions close to demarcation line get SMS strange massages. Informator.lg.ua tried to understand who send these demoralizing massages and why.

We can divide those massages for several groups. One part is for Ukrainian soldiers. Their mysterious author hidden behind the name of mobile provider appeals to stop participation in the ATO and return home.

Massages to civilians give a notice about a 10 hrivna charge-off for needs of the ATO and tell that all people’s property belongs to the state.

Ukrainian soldiers, volunteers and residents of regions close to demarcation line have been receiving such SMS massages for several months. It is obvious that their demoralizing content is aimed to create relevant atmosphere among Ukrainian soldiers and peaceful residents of the ATO zone.

Very often there are mistakes in texts common for a Russian speaking person. For example, unknown author calls soldiers to go “back home” – “додому” (in Ukrainian adverb додому is spelt as one word). One more example: “навасчекаютьжінкитадіти” (wives and children are waiting for you) – another problems of translation.

One more outrage mistake is the name of service provider, which is used by authors “Kievstar”, when the name of this operator is “Kyivstar”.

Irina Lelichenko – PR manager of the “Kyivstar” company commented in the fact of such SMS massaging. She said that the operator have nothing to do with those massaging in the ATO zone.

She also supposes that there are signs of extraneous radio equipment working in autonomous mode without interaction with Ukrainian providers’ equipment. Those are “simulators of base stations”, which simulate real stations and can operate with phone numbers in their range.

“There were similar cases in winter of 2014, when the same massages were distributed among peaceful participants of demonstration at the center of Kiev, while monitoring systems and commutators of service providers didn’t register those massaging and couldn’t identify phone numbers of authors”, — specialist sums up.

Some time ago pro-Kremlin propagandists also paid attention to this massaging. Information that “Ukrainian operators” attack residents of “LPR” by SMS is rapidly dismissing in pro-terrorists communities and social networks.

Why redactors have just noticed the fact of SMS-attacks, which started a long time ago?

It may be because “republics” are getting ready for their own mobile operators. Such announcements were made by representatives of “LPR” and “DPR”. If this assumption is right, it means that such SMS-war is used not only as a “weapon of propaganda” and a mean of playing havoc, but also as a method of unfair competition on the market of mobile service in the ATO zone.

And first of all, it is disadvantageous for Ukrainian operators.

Aleksey Chernov for the Informator.lg.ua