Once the Russian invasion began last week, both of Ukraine’s number stations went inactive and haven’t been heard since. Their two stations known as S06s, The Russian Lady and E17z, The English Lady did not transmit as expected on February 24th, 2022. There were more schedules after this date, but again it never showed up.
This brings up many questions, and answers. The first being will we ever hear these stations again? Depending on how the situation turns out, hopefully we will. The absence of them is certainly another strong confirmation they are indeed operated by Ukrainian intelligence.
Before the stations fell silent, one in particular, S06s sent some very unusual messages. It’s likely they could have been tests but they sent messages with groups that went on longer than 192 groups. They were also unpaired groups, which has only been seen a few times ever. In those cases they were also longer than usual and likely a different priority message. What’s so odd about this is that usually, S06s sends very short messages that are less than 10 groups long. This message in particular probably would have went on longer if the tx didn’t end up failing.
For those who came across this article and are not familiar with numbers stations, here is a short summary. Numbers stations are used by government intelligence agencies to send encrypted messages to their spies abroad. In Ukraine’s case, it would seem likely they used their stations to communicate to agents within Russia.
Russia’s Radio Communications Situation
Besides anything radio related, we don’t plan to write any more articles about the ongoing war. One interesting thing to take note of are the Russians use of cheap Chinese Baofeng radio’s.
Using both simple Baofeng radios and mobile phones, they are susceptible to the many radio listeners nearby. Maybe it’s more convenient and reserved for some lesser important comms? The Russian military also warned troops not to use Tiktok on their phones so they don’t compromise themselves and give away any military intel.
Earlier this week, it would seem Russian troops abandoned some positions where important documents, and other equipment were left behind. In one case, a frequency and call sign list was left behind. The NSRIC was able to provide a translation and examples on how these may have been used “Example of the Use of Russian Military Radio Call Signs and Frequencies.”
For weeks before the invasion even started, it would seem some pirates were also transmitting over The Buzzer. Both transmitting songs and sending many images over this time. Though the interference is likely appreciated by Ukraine, Russia would certainly have backups if they really couldn’t get a message out on the Buzzer.
