Intercepted Calls Reveal What Russian Soldiers Really Think of the Ukraine War

Unauthorized phone calls from the battlefield made by Russian soldiers to their loved ones intercepted by the Ukrainian government revealed what they truly think of the war waged by their country.

The calls made by soldiers from the frontlines of the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv revealed instances of unpreparedness of the Russian forces and the chaos within the mission.

The recordings of such calls were obtained by The New York Times and had been verified by reporters through cross-referencing Russian numbers and various messaging applications to identify the soldiers and their families.

Soldiers said in the calls that their morale has suffered and that equipment seems to be lacking. They also said that they were lied to about the mission they were going to partake in. All of these have possibly contributed to the setbacks faced by Russia in the past week.

Soldiers exposed the tremendous shortage of military supplies, confessed to capturing and killing civilians and revealed that they loot Ukrainian homes and businesses.

“Mom, this war is the stupidest decision our government ever made, I think,” said Sergey, one of the soldiers, in a call.

Sergey also has a recording talking to his girlfriend and said, “They just want to fool people on TV, like, 'Everything is all right; there’s no war, just a special operation.' But in reality, it’s an actual fucking war.”

The Daily Beast also reported that Russian men are being drafted for the "partial mobilization" without enough training for the war that they are going to fight in.

“Mobilized Russians are immediately taken to the front—without any preparation,” human rights group Perviy Otdel stated in Telegram.

“We were officially told there would be no training before we are sent to the war zone,” a mobilized Russian said in a video shared by Perviy Otdel.

It was revealed that the Russian forces have already lost a couple of tanks, about 1,190 of them since the war started, Oryx said, a Dutch open-source intelligence analysis website.