The American magazine "Newsweek" said that the Russian forces are now using some of their military capabilities that they did not use before during the war, in their battles, to achieve territorial gains in eastern Ukraine, which would enable them to militarily excel over their opponent.
The magazine reported that the Russian army employed electronic warfare in its attack on the eastern Donbass region, which has a large number of Russian speakers.
She said that new reports show that Russian forces are now intercepting the Ukrainian army's communications, as well as jamming navigation and guidance systems, including jamming drones and GPS devices.
In a statement to the Associated Press last Friday, an official with Aerorosvidka, a Ukrainian body that develops warplanes and other military means, said, "They (the Russians) are jamming everything." Their systems can reach it. We can't say they've become dominant, but they're holding us back a lot."
And Newsweek reported that Russia is jamming GPS devices on drones that the Ukrainian military uses to locate and attack Russian forces.
The magazine quoted Christian Bros, a former aide to Senator John McCain, as saying that Russian forces managed to kill a senior Ukrainian commander after luring him to answer a fake radio call from his mother.
American warnings
Newsweek said Russian forces, which failed to capture the Ukrainian capital Kyiv at the start of the war, now appear to be making gains in the Donbass region and preparing to drive Ukrainian forces out of Severodonetsk.
A report by the Congressional Research Service, published last April, warned that "the Russian military does not appear to have used many of the systems and capabilities it had mobilized prior to the invasion."
"We don't see them (the Russians) having yet used what we believe is the full range of their cyber warfare capabilities," the magazine quoted a senior Pentagon official as saying during a Congressional briefing last March.
An Associated Press report said that Russia may have held back from using electronic warfare at the start of the conflict for fear of misuse by poorly trained and experienced technicians, according to a Newsweek report.