[imagesource: Twitter / @ArmsControlWonk]

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is unfolding in real-time on our screens.

News sites and social media platforms have been flooded with reports on the fighter jets, explosions, missile strikes, and “intensive shelling” happening in Ukraine.

A spokesperson for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Putin aimed to “destroy the state of Ukraine, seize Ukrainian territory by force, and establish occupation control”.

We’re seeing people in tears making pleas on TikTok, photos of the aftermath of bombs on Instagram, and we’re hearing explosions ring out in the videos shared by Ukrainian residents and journalists on the ground all over Twitter.

Google Maps is even showing us live updates of war unfolding.

An open-source intelligence (OSINT) expert and professor at Middlebury Institute, Jeffrey Lewis, spotted an out of character traffic jam in Belgorod, Russia at 3:15AM local time yesterday, reported VICE.

He was using the traffic layer of Google Maps along with optical and radar satellite imagery taken days before, and reckons he and his colleagues were “the first people to see the invasion” on the traffic app of all places:

According @googlemaps, there is a “traffic jam” at 3:15 in the morning on the road from Belgorod, Russia to the Ukrainian border. It starts *exactly* where we saw a Russian formation of armor and IFV/APCs show up yesterday.
Someone’s on the move. pic.twitter.com/BYyc5YZsWL

— Dr. Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) February 24, 2022

With a radar picture taken by Capella Space, a company that provides satellite imagery, Lewis had spotted Russian armoured and heavy vehicles lined up and ready to move on Tuesday.

He put two and two together:

“We all looked at the picture, and was like, oh shit, it’s coming,” he said. As they were monitoring this unit, they noticed the traffic jam. “So it’s the prior work of knowing that there’s a giant Russian armored unit sitting right there that allowed us to say, like, oh, I know what that traffic jam is, they’re getting on the road.”

“We have developed incredibly data rich definitions of what normal patterns of life look like,” Lewis said, “And any deviation is immediately caught.”

Because Google Maps live traffic data is captured using the location and speed information from Android phones, people made the comment that the traffic jam might have been created by Russian soldiers who had mistakenly left their phones on.

However, Lewis made it clear that the traffic data came from ordinary people who were trying to get on the road but couldn’t because of Russia’s military movement:

“To clear up a misconception: The traffic data is most likely NOT from soldiers carrying smartphones. Instead, civilians are probably getting stuck at roadblocks and @googlemaps is recording that.” He tweeted later.

This Google Maps data is huge in that it can potentially help Ukraine make countermoves as the live traffic data tips off the exact location of Russia’s military invasion.

Although, as Lewis said, “it’s maybe less cool if the Russians were able to do something similar to, you know, spotting an offensive from Ukrainians.”

The “traffic jam” now stretches to the border with Ukraine. @madwonk and @triciawh1te have been sitting here watching creep down the road. pic.twitter.com/lYkNNz2p2x

— Dr. Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) February 24, 2022

While Google Maps made no comment on how useful its data can be in this crisis, a crowdsourcing effort is doing its best to “map, document and verify information in order to provide reliable information for policymakers and journalists of the on-the-ground and online situation in and around Ukraine”.

The Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map, updated as the situation unfolds, is created by the Centre For Information Resilience:

It sources material such as videos, photos, and other imagery that have been cross-referenced with satellite imagery to determine precise locations of military activity.

You can see the military movement, as well as footage of bombing, shelling, explosions, and the destruction reaped by this tragic war, here.

[source:vice]