Sep. 29 () –
The American newspaper ‘The New York Times’ has brought to light verified audios of Russian soldiers talking on the phone from the battlefield in Ukraine with their relatives in Russia, and in which they criticize Putin’s management of the war, the terrible conditions of their regiments or the difficulty in dealing with the Ukrainian troops.
“We are in Bucha. Our defense is stagnant, we are losing this war. We have been given orders to kill everyone we see … Putin is an idiot. He wants to take kyiv, but there is no way to do it,” he said. one of the Russian soldiers in the audios to which the aforementioned newspaper has had access.
Behind thousands of calls made between the military and their families in Russia, the Ukrainian government and its intelligence services were recording and analyzing each one of them. Until now, these audios had not been made public.
In those phone calls to friends and family back home, Russian soldiers offered damning insider accounts of battlefield failures and executions of civilians, as well as criticizing the Russian leader just weeks into the Ukraine invasion.
“Mom, this war is the worst decision our government has made. When is all this going to end, Putin? Damn,” a Russian soldier told his mother, who responded by admitting that in Russia the media reported that everything was going “from according to plan.”
Thanks to the audios, you can also glimpse the losses that the Russian Armed Forces were registering at the beginning of the war. A soldier from the 331st Airborne Regiment reported that the entire 2nd Battalion of 600 soldiers had been “annihilated”.
Another member of the Russian Armed Forces, asked by a relative about the death toll, replied that a third of the soldiers in his regiment had lost their lives.
These audios, which allow the Russian troops to understand the situation at the front, have been verified by ‘The New York Times’ by crossing Russian phone numbers with messaging applications, a process that has taken two months.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last week a “partial mobilization” of the population at the height of the war in Ukraine, where Russian forces have suffered several setbacks in recent weeks following a series of counter-offensives by Ukrainian troops.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have recovered part of the territory previously “occupied” by Russia in the east of the country, as in the case of the city of Izium, where mass graves with hundreds of bodies have been found.
