Al Jazeera :
On February 1, Igor, a middle-aged truck driver from Krasnodar posted a video on TikTok of a Russian military convoy cruising down a two-lane road in a rural area.
The short clip has gathered a little over 350 views – but it was quickly picked up by hawk-eyed analysts who monitor Russia’s military using open-source information and usually post their findings on Twitter.
Ruslan Leviev, founding member of Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), an independent Russian investigative organisation, is among them. He says TikTok videos showing the Russian military on the move are increasingly taking up a significant amount of researchers’ time – especially now, as tensions ratchet up on Russia’s border with Ukraine – helping them to report and analyse movements across the country.
Leviev says the people behind the posting of such content are usually truckers, railway workers and residents. In fact, Igor’s TikTok was just one video in a stream of content depicting Russian military movements, including by the national guard, an internal military force that as Leviev suggests can be deployed to perform military police functions on Russian-controlled territories.
