In audio intercepts from the front lines in Ukraine, Russian soldiers speak in shorthand of 200s to mean dead, 300s to mean wounded. The urge to flee has become common enough that they also talk of 500s — people who refuse to fight.
As the war grinds into its second winter, a growing number of Russian soldiers want out, as suggested in secret recordings obtained by The Associated Press of Russian soldiers calling home from the battlefields of the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.
The calls offer a rare glimpse of the war as it looked through Russian eyes — a point of view that seldom makes its way into Western media, largely because Russia has made it a crime to speak honestly about the conflict in Ukraine. They also show clearly how the war has progressed, from the professional soldiers who initially powered Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion to men from all walks of life compelled to serve in grueling conditions.
“There’s no f------ ‘dying the death of the brave’ here,” one soldier told his brother from the front in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. “You just die like a f------ earthworm.”
How do Russians against the war rationalize the actions of the country? Is there a sense Putin is catering to the will of capitalist oligarchs who want access to the gas reserves in Western Ukraine, or at least want to avoid an EU or NATO-aligned Ukraine from cutting off their access to these resources? Or is this a war based solely on one man’s ego? My understanding is the Putin ego is a careful balancing act that keeps him useful for the capital interests with the propaganda around him being more of a postmodern type crafting of his brand and the country’s image.