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It helps decentralized defenders and it demoralizes attackers
What we are witnessing in Ukraine is a change in warfare that Putin and his advisors probably didn’t anticipate. It is that the balance of communication in the kind of invasion that he has undertaken has shifted from advantage of the invaders to advantage of the defenders.
The Russian forces depend on tightly controlled communication between commanders and troops. As a result, most of the troops on the ground only know what their commanders tell them. What they experiencing where they are — the kind of resistance they are encountering, or why their progress is stalled and why they are running out of food and fuel — are probably hard for them to understand.
The Ukrainian defenders have access to the internet and, along with potential disinformation, a lot of actually useful information for coordinating their defensive activities. Even many members of the Russian population have access to the internet, giving them a broader picture of the war than the active Russian military have.
The Russian military can’t win the communication war. Tightly constricted communication with their troops leaves them largely in the dark and undermines their morale. But giving the troops access to the internet and knowledge of the widespread resistance to their invasion…
