There are dozens of them: at least 25 all-Ukrainian, more than 40 regional, and another 20-30 aggregators that reprint information from open sources. The most popular twenty have a total of over 5.5 million subscribers. We are talking about monitoring channels on Telegram — a phenomenon that became massive during a full-scale war. Why has an entire ecosystem of private anonymous channels grown in Ukraine, along with official channels for reporting alarms and attacks? Where do they get their information from and does it make sense to trust them? DefPulse journalists learned about this and more.
From news to missile attack alerts
4:20 a.m., February 24, 2022. Oleksandr, founder of the Zaporizhzhia monitoring channel “Operativno by HLEP”, understands: scattered reports about the beginning and progress of the war are alarming. Therefore, it is worth sifting through them and presenting them in a structured way — at least for friends and family.He creates a channel on Telegram, the most popular messenger in Ukraine.
“I had experience working in the media: this is the sports website Tribuna and my personal project ProZaporizhzhia,” says Oleksandr. So the approach to working with information was purely journalistic: only reports from verified sources, without hype and panic.
Thus, according to Oleksandr, a channel appeared, which relatives began to send to acquaintances – and “it came and went”. At first, there were just news: threat monitoring was added later, when the first attacks with S-300 missiles on Zaporizhzhia began, and their own sources of notification appeared among patriotic residents of the temporarily occupied territories. Currently, almost 166 thousand people have subscribed to “Operativno…”.
According to the Duflu research portal, from February 24, 2022 to February 2026, 74,968 air alerts were recorded in Ukraine, and some regions experienced continuous alerts lasting up to 87 hours.
This is one of dozens of similar stories that have changed the information space of Ukraine during the four years of war. Most monitoring channels operate in the Telegram messenger. The Telemetrio agency records that the total number of subscribersUkrainian Telegram channelsgrew explosively — from 64 million in 2021 to 433.2 million in 2025, and the number of channels themselves reached 127,032.
In essence, a new information space has emerged in which anonymous or semi-anonymous administrators have de facto taken over the notification function — the one that, according to civil security rules, state media should perform.
Enemy attacks — especially in frontline cities — continue day and night. It is obvious that subscribers expect the channels to provide timely notifications at any time of the day. This requires teamwork.
The channel is staffed by three admins who work in shifts, and six more moderators monitor the comments. Shifts last 8–12 hours, and if someone drops out situationally, 14–15, and this has to be combined with third-party projects. Sometimes there is almost no sleep, sometimes it is difficult, but the burden is bearable, — says Oleksandr and adds: he is proud that the work gives people information about the danger instead of an information vacuum.
Three generations of monitoring channels
Researchers describe the evolution of monitoring channels as three stages.
In the spring and summer of 2022, it was mostly a rebroadcast of official notifications. Administrators duplicated information from regional military administrations and published subscribers’ messages about explosions, and the main quality criterion was speed.
In the fall of 2022 – summer of 2023, with the beginning of massive strikes on the energy sector with missiles and “Shaheds”, the channels began to integrate OSINT and insider data, monitor radio frequencies, and publish trajectories.
Since the end of 2023, the industry has entered the commercialization stage. Now, major news networks have begun to clone the “monitoring” format, turning Ukrainians’ interest in additional information into a traffic tool.
Structure of modern monitoring channels
Official government sources
- “Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” (@kpszsu) is the main official channel of the Air Force command, with over 870 thousand subscribers. Since 2023, it has been publishing not only the fact of the alarm, but also the type of targets and course.
- “Air Alert” (@air_alert_ua) is an official state channel with alert statuses by community, data is provided by executive authorities.
- The “Air Alert” application (developed by Ajax Systems and Stfalcon) – over 46 million downloads, duplicates the state alert system at the community level.
Regional niche channels
Smaller in coverage. Characteristic features: binding to 2–3 regions, own local sources, bot for messages from subscribers. Unlike nationwide networks, they compete not for maximum traffic, but for accuracy and speed for a specific region.
Where do monitoring channels get their information from?
Administrators of unofficial monitoring channels are reluctant to share sources. In fact, there are several ways to obtain information about possible attacks and the courses of air targets.
The first is classic OSINT: analysis of satellite images, monitoring of forums and chats (including enemy ones).This is how they receive information about the preparation of missile strikes and troop movements.
The second is radio-electronic interception. According to TSN, radio amateurs monitor the radio exchange of the crews of the Tu-95MS and Tu-160 strategic missile carriers at a frequency of 8131 kHz, which makes it possible to warn of a threat several hours before the missiles enter the airspace..The channels use this information to collect information about the preparation of missile attacks involving aircraft.
And there is also an automated military system”Bend-Tablet”(and analogues), which is accessible to units of the Defense Forces and heads of regional administrations. From here, according to representatives of the Air Force, information leaks into open publics regularly occur. Information about most types of threats is displayed here, but often with a link only to a certain part of the region or district.
Administrators of the most famous channels claim that they work only with legally obtained data.
We use a combination of data: this is information from our own sources and from subscribers, which they can send to the bot. In most cases, it helps much more, especially when it comes to FPV drones and “Lightnings” recorded over the city, – says Oleksandr.
The line between operational notification and responsibility is a daily challenge for channels. For example, Operativno by HLEP has a clear rule for the most difficult category of notifications – about acoustic fixation of drones over city areas. Information is published only after 2-3 similar messages from different people are received. According to Oleksandr, this allows us to filter out genuine observations from panic reactions to lawn mowers or mopeds.
But mistakes still happen — both in the news and in threat assessments.
“We are not robots, but living people, and our subscribers understand this. From our side, it is always an apology and further minimization of such things,” says Oleksandr.
This contrasts with the problem documented by the Institute of Mass Information and Detector Media: researchers have discovered hundreds of clone channels masquerading as popular Ukrainian resources and spreading disinformation about the use of weapons during massive attacks. “5,000 drones on Kyiv,” “nuclear bomb on Lviv,” and similar propaganda are tactics aimed at increasing panic and undermining trust in the authorities.
Dialogue instead of prohibitions
Publishing detailed information about the movement of targets is a sensitive topic for the military command. Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ignat has repeatedly emphasized that the harm lies not in the fact of notifying the population, but in the publication of screenshots or texts that expose weak areas of Ukraine’s radar field.
Since March 24, 2022, this has been criminally punishable under Article 114-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. According to Suspilny, more than 200 people have been suspected of it, 190 cases have already been sent to court, and the standard punishment is 5 years in prison.
Oleksandr claims that he is in constant contact with state structures:
There was no such thing as something being banned or asked not to be published, there is a normal dialogue with these structures. We are not children, we have been working with the channel for several years, and we are already getting our bearings in terms of what, when and how can be published, and what should not.
There is a separate group within the Air Force Command that monitors Telegram and, if necessary, asks administrators to remove sensitive information.
Why do private notification channels “win” over official ones?
Over the past four years, Ukrainians’ trust in traditional media has declined: according to a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, from 57% in 2022 to 27% in December 2024, while the share of distrust has increased to 42%. At the same time, trust in Telegram channels has remained stable at over 51%.
The Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, together with the Razumkov Center, recorded that 53% of respondents called Telegram channels the main source of news about the war.
Alexander explains this gap in a purely practical way:
People understand that there is a conventional Air Force channel that writes about all regions of Ukraine, there is general information. There is no information about FPV, one message when they drop KABs, without specifics about where they are flying. At the same time, regional monitoring channels provide more extensive information, more operational: because there is a clear focus and selection.
The Economy of Fear
“Thank you for saving my life,” the user signs her donation to the monitoring channel. Half an hour ago, the city was attacked by KABs, and the channel reported on the likelihood of this danger in time. For comparison: the official resource “Air Force” reported about KABs almost at the moment the bombs fell.
Where people’s attention is concentrated in a state of constant stress, business inevitably develops. Journalists from Texty.org.ua, who analyzed the work of the largest networks from January to April 2025, describe a typical pattern:
- A clickbait message on a million-dollar channel leads to a closed channel on the same network. Usually it’s a panicky headline about “thousands of drones” or an offer to join a closed club where “they tell you exactly where the missiles are flying.”
- The user who clicks on the link is forced to subscribe to 3-4 more third-party resources (often of dubious quality).
- All channels to which the user subscribes display advertisements for casinos and financial pyramids.
Chastiniamonitoring channels earn money only through subscriber support, and some allow paid advertising in the channels..
We have donations from the audience, plus I have other side projects besides the channel. Now we are gradually thinking about advertising, but we want it to be without bytes like “100,500 missiles are flying, subscribe to the radar that sees everything,” says Oleksandr.
According to him, the channel’s moderators work on a volunteer basis, and the admin staff is supported by donations from subscribers and the sale of merchandise.
A shop without a monopolist
Despite the fact that researchers describe the monitoring channel market mainly through the prism of competition for traffic, Oleksandr speaks of a fairly healthy dynamic within the community:
We have a community of channel admins, everyone is on good terms. There is always competition, and I think it is beneficial because everyone is developing, not standing still.
According to him, it is competition that is the reason why the audience has a choice, and not a single monopolist.
What does the state think about this?
Back in March 2023, Yuriy Ignat, spokesman for the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, warned administrators of monitoring publics during a telethon that publishing data on the movement of missiles and drones and the work of air defense could be classified as a crime against Ukraine, and promised to transfer the relevant materials to the relevant bodies.
Within a few months, the tone had changed. According to LIGA.net, Ignat admitted that the data from monitoring forums about the types of air threats were mostly true, and explained why the Air Force does not always have time to warn first: a few minutes pass from the launch of a ballistic missile to the destruction of the target, and official channels often do not have enough time for this.
TSN quotes Ignat’s admission about the Air Force’s cooperation with specific large channels: the press service of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine uses them to promptly disseminate official information, and there are currently no complaints about the quality of their publications: there was only one situation when they asked to correct an incorrect headline.
At the same time, the issue of data leaks is still problematic. Yuriy Ignat admitted in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda that all Defense Forces have access to data on the air situation. Therefore, the chain through which information enters anonymous channels is difficult to trace.
The price of knowledge — psychological consequences
The downside of access to operational notifications about alarms and attacks is psychological disorders. According to the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 79.4% of Ukrainians report that news and information from the media cause them negative experiences, and stress from media consumption is the strongest factor of psychological stress for the population in war conditions. And the National Social Service of Ukraine back in 2023 talked about the “phantom siren syndrome” — an anxiety disorder caused by the body’s reaction to constant stress, including due to the consumption of relevant news.
But there is another side – the burnout of the channel administrators themselves.
There is such a thing as burnout, and it has happened more than once. But in the process of work you do not concentrate on it, and over time it simply passes and is forgotten. There is motivation in the comments of people who thank you for the work, — says Oleksandr.
What’s next?
The Verkhovna Rada is still trying to pass bill No. 11115 on deanonymization of Telegram channels, which has been consistently removed from the agenda so far. Therefore, Ukrainian officials do not have a tool to regulate anonymous monitoring channels. At the same time, the population’s demand for operational information is not going away.
When asked how he sees the channel after the end of the war, Oleksandr answers:
I think there will be a lot more good news than there is now. People will need to read it somewhere, so we will have plenty of work to do anyway.
DefPulse Guide: How to Choose a Secure Monitoring Channel
- Check the transparency of the administration.A channel that openly says who runs it, or at least consistently communicates with the audience, inspires more trust.
- Check the information with an official source.SafeThe monitoring channel does not contradict the data of the Air Force or the State Emergency Service, but complements them with details – region, target type, approximate direction.
- See if the channel admits its own mistakes.Practicing apologies and corrections is a sign of a responsible approach. Silently deleting or ignoring false messages is a red flag.
- Avoid channels that aggressively push you to subscribe to the “network”If every second message leads to 3–4 other channels with the promise of “more accurate information” – this is a commercial traffic pyramid.
- Pay attention to advertisingThe constant advertising of casinos, betting, and crypto schemes alongside reports of rockets is a marker of a model for which the audience’s attention is more important than its safety.
- Beware of excessive detailA channel that publishes precise coordinates of hits, detailed trajectories of targets, or data on the operation of air defenses harms the defense, and therefore you.
- Rate the storyA channel that has been operating for years and has gone through several waves of massive attacks is usually more reliable than one that has just emerged during the next escalation.