The murder of a Russian army officer, which occurred while jogging, raises many questions. Could the Strava running tracking app have been used to track him?
Was Strava, the running app, used to kill a Russian army captain? It is in any case a possibility raised by several sources and cited by Le Monde and BFMTV. The murder of soldier Vladislav Rjitski, which occurred on July 10, 2023 while he was jogging, could have been planned thanks to the application, which makes it possible to share the route of his races.
There is currently no certainty on this aspect, nor on the sponsors of the assassination – some leads seem to tend towards the Ukrainian services, according to Le Monde. In any case, the story intrigues and shows more than ever that geolocation apps can be particularly dangerous in times of war.
Strava, a running app that shares races
Vladislav Rzhitsky was a senior Russian military officer, captain and former commander of the Krasnodar submarine — a ship made infamous in July 2022 for launching a strike on the Ukrainian town of Vinnytisa that left 27 people dead. The soldier had since been based in the eponymous city of Krasnodar, where he was responsible, according to Le Monde, ” organize mobilization operations for the region “.
Vladislav Rjitski was assassinated by several shots in the chest on Monday July 10, 2023 in the morning, while jogging. According to Le Monde, the soldier was “ a regular user from Strava, and shared his running or cycling errands almost daily on the app. ” Several Russian sources note that these routes were very often identical, suggesting that the organizers of his murder may have used the application to find out his position on the morning of July 10. “explains the newspaper.
If there is no official confirmation of the role played by the app in the planning of the assassination, there is doubt, especially since observers suspect the involvement of Ukrainian services in the case. The latter could have relied on the routes shared by the soldier to plan their attack.
As BFMTV reminds us, the basic app “ its whole concept about sharing sports related data “. The data may be accessible to all Strava users, even people who are not your relatives. If the service member had not restricted the sharing of information with the app, then ” anyone on the internet “could have access to” the distance of the activity », « travel time », « photos “, And ” the map » of the races, indicate the conditions of use of the app. Such an adjustment could have cost the soldier his life.
This is not the first time that apps sharing the geolocation of their users have been used against the military. Already in 2018, DGSE agents who had shared their races on Strava had been identified thanks to this data. More recently, Russian soldiers have been geolocated thanks to Tinder. Ukrainian hackers had also created fake profiles of ” attractive women in order to trap enemy soldiers.
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