“No one feeds us, mum. Our supplies are crap, to be honest. We draw water from puddles, then filter and drink it». One of the Russian soldiers at the front, Andrey, on November 8, from the eastern Ukrainian town of Lyman, called his mother, who lives in Kostroma, a city northeast of Moscow, breaking the orders of his superiors.
This and other conversations have been intercepted by the Ukrainian military and switch to the British newspaper The Guardian. Andrey explains that the promise of munitions that could turn the tide of war had not materialized. “Where are the missiles Putin bragged about? There is a building in front of us and we cannot hit it. All that would be needed would be a Caliber missile».
The lack of effective equipment has led many soldiers to steal armor from deceased Ukrainian soldiers. In an intercept that had been posted by the New York Timesa Russian soldier reported seeing members of his battalion remove the equipment from the corpses, because «NATO’s armor is better than ours».
In a November 6 conversation between a father and the colleagues of his son, who was killed while on duty, one of the Russian soldiers explains: «We are not receiving reinforcements or communications. But they said we could not withdraw. Otherwise we would have been shot».
In another intercept, a soldier in the Donetsk region tells his wife that he and three others fled a massacre. “I’m in a sleeping bag, all wet, and I have a cough. I’m in bad shape overall. Thus they send us, knowingly, to the massacre».
Especially in the first period of the war it was very easy to intercept Russian communications: conversations about strategy between military commanders could be overheard even by amateurs, since the military used open radio frequencies. And there are still many soldiers who bring cell phones to the front lines to talk to their families and come intercepted while passing through a Ukrainian telecommunications provider or over the air. And it is precisely this huge number of calls made by soldiers at the front that gives a very clear picture of the weaknesses of the Russian army.
Source: Vanity Fair
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