Calls between Kremlin soldiers and their relatives intercepted by Ukrainians revealed the severity of the conditions and the difficult position in which the Russian forces live.
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The British media The Guardian published the audio tapes of these disturbing conversations.
On November 8, at 3:10 p.m., a Russian soldier stationed on the front line named Andrey ignored orders from his superiors to call his mother with an unauthorized cell phone.
“Nobody feeds us, mum,” he complained. “Our supply is crap, to be honest. We collect and filter water from rain puddles to drink.”
Near Lyman, in eastern Ukraine, Russian forces had been in retreat for several weeks. Captured since May 2022, the city was liberated by the Ukrainian army in October.
Two days before Andrey’s call, Russian forces had “finally” started firing at Ukrainian troops with phosphorus bombs, he told his mother, due to lack of ammunition.
“Where are the missiles that Putin was bragging about?” he said on the phone. “There is a tall building in front of us. Our soldiers can’t touch it. We need a missile and that’s it.”
He later reassured his mother, who lives in Kostroma, a town 500 kilometers northeast of Moscow, that he was fine regardless. “I always say prayers, mom. Every morning”.
The content of the 5 minutes and 26 seconds conversation between the Russian soldier and his mother can be heard through the Guardian, because the Ukrainian army transmitted it to the newspaper.
In another intercept from October 26, a soldier from the Donetsk region tells his wife how he fled with three people and was considering surrender.
“I’m in a sleeping bag, all wet, coughing, in short, I’m generally dead,” he said over the phone. “We were allowed to be shot.”
Communication and restricted security
Ukrainian intelligence services listened to thousands of calls between soldiers in the trenches or with their relatives, reviewed for strategy, and then released to the media.
At the start of the war, strategic conversations between soldiers were picked up, even by amateurs, through open radio frequencies. Evidence of low communications security.
Then, a series of press articles based on interpretations of calls reporting rights violations in Bucha, a town north of Kyiv where civilians were allegedly shot or the low morale of the Russian army led the army Russian to tighten the screw on their soldiers.
Even today, a large handful of soldiers bring their cell phones to the front, wanting to chat with their families, and then intercepted by telecommunications providers.
Although a portrait of Russian strategy is difficult to draw, the huge number of calls made by soldiers can nevertheless shed light on the weaknesses of the Russian army, reported The Guardian.