The cellphone thing is very widespread among all armies in the world, in fact many of USAs military bases were fully mapped out using data from an exercise app.
Ukraine of course also uses cellphones, with Ukranian troops describing it as a necessary way to pass time in the trenches by playing video games.
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While the West loses interest in the war, China has become more alarmed by the West's actions and harsher in its tone. Its messaging has been described as less impartial and it could be due to the study it ran about the economic ramifications of a similar sanctioning effect on its country to Russia. We now have China calling the sanctions "economic weaponisation" and "financial terrorism".