How the invaders’ retreat was tracked via looted earphones

A UKRAINIAN man has been tracking the redeployment of Vladimir Putin’s forces via a pair of wireless earphones stolen from him by invading troops.

Vitaliy Semenets’s Apple AirPods were looted from his home in Hostomel, near Kyiv, soon after the war began as Russia tried to take the Ukrainian capital.

He has since been using Find My – a location-tracking feature available on all Apple products – to follow the troops on their 550mile retreat across the country.

As Russian soldiers pulled back from Kyiv this month, Mr Semenets followed his earphones on online maps as they were taken across the border into Belarus, ending up near the city of Gomel. Last week the AirPods – which cost as much as £200 – had reached Belgorod, a city in Russia where Putin is assembling troops for an assault on the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine.

Mr Semenets has been posting updates about his AirPods’ journey on his Instagram account after telling how they were looted by Russian ‘orcs’ – the fictional Lord Of The Rings monsters whose name many Ukrainians use to describe the invading troops.

Apple’s Find My app can trace missing devices via Bluetooth or if they connect to the internet.

There have been widespread reports of looting by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.