Their names are Aleksandr, Vlad, Sergei, Andrei, Nikita, Yevgeni or even Ivan. They are some of the dozens of Russian soldiers then deployed in Boutcha, Ukraine, whose telephone conversations with relatives were intercepted by the Ukrainian services last March. The recordings of these calls, made behind the back of his command, were later transmitted to the New York Times who posted the lengthy litany Wednesday on his website.
These sounds reveal the desperation of the soldiers who do not know what they are doing there, they have the intimate conviction that the offensive they lead is already doomed. Above all, they allow us to measure the company’s anger against Russian power. Finally, they give a more precise idea of the war crimes perpetrated in this suburb of Kyiv, liberated by the Ukrainians in late March and early April.
A long authentication job
As always when we hear rumors about the espionage services of a belligerent state, it is necessary to take stock of the methodology used to ensure the veracity of these calls. the New York Times he first admits to having simply received them from the Ukrainian authorities. His journalists then spent two months translating them and carried out painstaking authentication work. They thus compared the numbers of the Russian soldiers with the data of the messaging applications and their accounts in social networks. They also carried out the same operations to certify the identity of their interlocutors on the back.
the New York Times he concluded that his calls – “thousands” according to the title – did indeed come from the Russian military, and more precisely from soldiers of the National Guard or the Air Force.
On the front lines, power takes for its rank
In the first place, it shows that the Russian military did not wait for the partial mobilization order decreed last Wednesday to understand that the campaign was not on the right track. And the first responsible seems to have found everything.
“Putin is a fool,” Aleksandr proclaims over the phone.
“He wants to take Kyiv. But we have no chance of success.” “We can’t take Kyiv… We take villages, that’s all,” he continues. Sergei breaks the bad news to his mother: “Our offensive has failed. We are losing the war.” He continues: “Mom, this is the stupidest decision the government has ever made, I think.” Evoking this time the situation at the front with his girlfriend, Sergei himself attacks the command more broadly.
“They wanted to do it all at once, and damn it didn’t go as planned,” he laments.
Calling his girlfriend, Ilya worries about what is being said in the country. And despair of seeing the end of the tunnel soon. “What else are they saying? When is Putin going to stop all this? Damn,” he boils. “Well, he says that everything is going according to plan and on time,” replies his interlocutor. “Well, he is very wrong,” Ilya laments then.
“We were 400, we are 38”: the carnage by phone
An offensive already stalled, officers who do not fulfill their objectives, a political power in decline… All this can be seen on the ground as of March. And the picture that the military paints is amazing.
“Half the regiment is dead,” Andreï points out.
“We were 400 paratroopers,” Sergei tells his mother, and continues: “We are 38 survivors. Because the leaders sent us to the slaughterhouse.” And, of course, morale is low. Nikita laments: “The ‘Khokhols’ (Russians’ insult to Ukrainians and which can be translated as ‘hicks’, Editor’s Note) are advancing and we are standing there… I never would have thought that I would end up in such a mess.” Despair is not just individual, as Andrei’s words to his girlfriend show:
“The atmosphere is super negative. There’s a guy who’s crying, another guy kills himself, damn it. They tire me, they make me sick.”
Difficulties of loved ones.
At the other end of the line, families and loved ones are no longer brave. Iván’s fiancée is alarmed to see that the dead accumulate around her.
“Vanya, the coffins keep coming. We’re burying one man after another. It’s a nightmare.”
The delegations also describe the economic consequences of the war in the country: food price explosion, shortages, brands and multinationals closing their doors to punish the aggressor. A scenario that has airs of deja vu for Yevgeny’s wife:
“When you come back, you’ll feel like you’re taking a trip back to the 1990s,” she tells him.
If the population can only see the impact of the conflict in their daily lives and is not fooled, the soldiers break into their cover for propaganda. “They tell people nonsense on TV, like, ‘Okay, it’s not a war, it’s just a special operation. But actually, it’s a bloody war,'” Sergei tells his friend.
“These bastards didn’t say anything”: soldiers surprised by the war
A “damn war” then. However, they did not sign for that. By phone, the soldiers return to the circumstances of the invasion launched on February 24. And if the partial mobilization decreed by the Kremlin last Wednesday combines failures and lack of training of the new recruits, these career soldiers were also baffled.
“They didn’t tell us we were going to war. They told us the day before,” Sergei assures his mother.
Nikita talks for her part with a friend. But she echoes back at me: “We were supposed to train for two or three days. They fucked us like fucking kids.” Finally, Alexeï tells his girlfriend: “I didn’t expect that. They told us we were going to train. These bastards didn’t tell us anything.”
“Corpses on the road”: the narrative of war crimes
However, leaders are not dumb. They transmit some orders. And these are creepy. The leaked recordings support the reality of war crimes in Boutcha – to date denied by Moscow – where the Ukrainians discovered around 1,100 bodies when they liberated the city in early April.
Sergei slips like this: “They gave us the order to kill all the people we meet.” Later, he evokes a forest transformed into a mass grave. “There is a forest here, where the division is based. I walked there and saw a sea of corpses, dressed in civilian clothes. A sea. I’ve never seen so many bodies in my whole fucking life. crazy,” he told his mother.
“Damn, there are dead bodies lying on the ground by the road. Civilians,” Nikita confesses to her friend.
“I have an apartment in my pocket”: loud looting
However, when the dead found along the way are not civilians, they can prove cynically useful to the visibly defenseless Russians.
“Some guys took the equipment from the corpses of the Ukrainians. They have NATO equipment that is better than ours,” Sergei explains to his girlfriend.
If these spoils of war are related to survival, others have no excuse to help each other at home. The looting stories add to each other. Nikita expresses her disgust to a friend:
“Everything was looted. They drank all the alcohol, they took all the money. Everybody does that here.”
All do not have their virtue and those do not hesitate to feed on the beast. Sometimes to the chagrin of your interlocutor. This is the case of Aleksandr who boasts with whom he shares his life: “He starts looking for a flat in Orenburg”. “Why?” his fiancée wondered. “Well, with Misha, we went to a house, and we opened a stash with the key. There were 5.2 million rubles (almost 935,000 euros, Ed) ”, she explains. “Give them back to me,” then orders the companion of the soldier who is heard responding:
“I’m not stupid. I have an apartment in my pocket.”
“Fuck the Army”
The frustration is obvious. And some hide it less than others. Vadim also promises his girlfriend that she will “quit”. “My God… I’m going back to civilian life. And my son will not go to the army either, 100% sure… Tell him that he is going to be a doctor, ”she develops.
Vlad is more succinct: “When I come back, I quit. Fuck the army.”
Source: BFM TV
