“
I confirmed for myself that what I saw on television was rubbish.
New recordings of phone calls from Russian soldiers were published in
The Guardian
on Tuesday 20 December.
They had been captured earlier by the Ukrainian army, which passed them on to the British newspaper.
In one of them, captured on November 9 near the town of Lyman, a Russian soldier speaks to his mother, deploring the living conditions on the front line as well as the lack of ammunition of the Russian army.
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As a reminder, at the time, Lyman - a town located in the eastern region of Donetsk and considered an important railway junction - had just been liberated by Ukrainian forces after four months of Russian occupation, last October.
A mass grave had been discovered there.
Two days before the call, on November 7, "
the Russians began to fire on the Ukrainian positions with phosphorus bombs
", transcribed
The Guardian
quoting the words of the Russian soldier.
Here is an excerpt from the exchange:
Telephone exchange between the Russian soldier near Lyman and his mother on November 9.
Andrei
:
“Even in my sleep, I remain alert and active.”
Andrei's mother
:
“Do they feed you there?
You are constantly in the trenches.”
Andrey
:
“No one feeds us here, mom.
To be honest, our supply sucks.
We draw water from the puddles, we filter it and then we drink it.”
Andreï's mother
:
“The nightmare.
Where can I complain?
Where to go ?"
Andrei
:
“Nowhere.
It's no use.
It's only on television that they show how wonderful everything is.
In fact, it's completely shitty.
We don't have a lot of supplies.
But I'm not complaining.
I knew where I was going and I knew how it was here.
It allowed me to confirm that what I saw on TV was nonsense.
In all, the conversation between the Russian soldier and his mother lasts 5 minutes and 26 seconds.
In addition to the living conditions of the soldiers on the front line, Andreï also evokes the lack of adequate ammunition, with which certain objectives could have been achieved, according to him: “
There is a skyscraper just in front of us.
Our soldiers can't reach it.
We need a Kalibr cruise missile and that's it
,” the man said.
“
Where are the missiles that Putin bragged about?
he asks.
A resident carries firewood in front of a damaged building where he lives without electricity, water and heating, in the city of Lyman, on December 14, 2022. GENYA SAVILOV / AFP
Contacted by
The Guardian,
his mother, who lives in Kostroma, said her son was not with her, "
before bursting into tears and hanging up the phone
", reports the newspaper.
Allowed to be slaughtered
Two other recordings were provided to the British media.
One of them is an exchange between a father and the colleagues of his son, also named Andreï, who was killed while serving in the 35th motorized rifle brigade.
“
They said we weren't allowed to retreat.
Otherwise, we could be shot
,” confides one of the colleagues.
This aerial photograph taken on December 20, 2022 shows the destruction of the village of Bohorodychne in eastern Ukraine.
IONUT IORDACHESCU / AFP
In the last recording, a soldier from the Donetsk region tells his wife how he fled with three other soldiers from a bloodbath and was considering surrender.
Here is an exerpt :
Telephone conversation between a Russian soldier and his wife, October 26.
Russian soldier
:
"I'm in a sleeping bag, all wet, I'm coughing, I'm in a bad state."
Russian soldier's wife
: “
My poor kitten.
»
Russian soldier
:
“They authorized our massacre.”
Russian soldier's wife
:
“So you have to surrender your weapons and that's it.
And say: 'I'm not going there anymore and that's it'.
»
Russian soldier
:
“We kept running.
Everyone threw down their weapons and fled
.”
Russian soldier's wife
: “
It's completely crazy.
»
The soldier's wife declined to comment to the newspaper.
Thousands of calls like these have been intercepted, says
The Guardian.
A lack of training
How is it possible that the Ukrainian army intercepted so many calls?
An expert tells the
Guardian
that many soldiers bring mobile phones to the front line, wanting to maintain a connection with their families.
“
Security has always been a mess, both in the army and among defense officials
,” confirms a former Kremlin defense official.
“
For example, in 2013 they tried to get all Defense Ministry personnel to replace our iPhones with Russian-made Yoto smartphones.
But everyone just kept using the iPhone as a second mobile because it was so much better.
»
The calls are then intercepted when they are made
“via a Ukrainian telephone operator, or by air
”, develops the British daily Dmitri Alperovitch, expert in cybersecurity.
This is not the first time that exchanges have been shared by a media.
Last October, it was the
New York Times
which revealed exchanges, which had already demonstrated the disarray of Russian soldiers on the front during the first month of the war.