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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Russian soldiers staging for the attacks were posting to TikTok, and on the night of the invasion, traffic jams started showing up at 3am near the border.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgd7dd/google-maps-live-traf...

Seems clear the policy and the reality are not identical here.

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Russian soldiers flirted with Ukrainian women on Tinder right before the invasion. Either they have no shame whatsoever, or they actually thought they would be welcomed as saviours, as so many soldiers been told before.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/4757640/russian-soldiers-tinder...

If this wasn't a dead giveaway, the Sun is a tabloid so unlikely to be true unless you have a more credible source:

    "RUSSIAN soldiers began bombarding Ukraine yesterday — with Tinder messages looking for love."

Aren’t all British papers tabloids?

They are either tabloids or broadsheets, the terms coming from the historical size of the physical newspaper.

Broadsheets are physically bigger, more text, typically more serious, aiming at a more sophisticated reader

Tabloids physically smaller, more salacious, aiming at the mass market

(Many broadsheets became smaller to save printing costs over time, but the categories still apply)

No, some are still broadsheets, such as the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times.

It’s worth saying that the word “tabloid” is typically used to refer to the style of journalism (ie the focus on entertainment) rather than in its historical context of the type/size of paper.

In that context, if we take the question to mean "Aren’t all British papers horsehit?", then the answer is definitely yes.

The linked article says "many commenters ... assume the Russian soldiers left their phones on ... but Lewis said that almost certainly was not the case, and the traffic data Google was showing was ordinary people who couldn’t get on the road because of Russian military movement." Which doesn't rule it out, but clearly doesn't require it to be true.

At 3am?

"The traffic jam slowly extended to the border, where it then disappeared."

That still seems possible, if civilians have been fleeing in their cars? It sounded like drives that would have taken a day under normal conditions were taking several days in the current chaos. Which of course still doesn't mean Russian soldiers might have their phones on.

Why would a traffic's jam worth of people be fleeing from Russia into Ukraine alongside the invading forces?

The expert quoted says that it almost certainly wasn't due to soldiers leaving their phones on. He suspects it was ordinary people who were slowed by the movement.

That said, if they were posting on TikTok that's another story.

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