As Russian authorities plow full-steam ahead with a deranged PR effort to “restore” the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol that Putin’s troops nearly wiped off the face of the earth, Ukrainian citizens detained in other cities occupied by Russian troops will reportedly be used to perform the deadly task of removing landmines from the area.
That’s according to Ukraine’s Security Service, which released audio Thursday of what it described as an intercepted phone call between an officer of Russia’s FSB and a colleague apparently tasked with cleaning up the supposedly “liberated” city.
In the nearly three-minute recording, the purported FSB officer identifies himself by the call name “Kaspii” and asks his colleague if he’s been briefed on plans to de-mine Mariupol “the natural way” and send those “detained” in Russian-occupied Melitopol to complete the task.
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His colleague, who says he’s located in Basan in the Zaporizhia region, responds that he had not yet been informed of that plan but “that wouldn’t be bad.”
“Kaspii” says everything has already been agreed upon with military leadership, but the logistics still need to be pinned down: “Everyone’s already aware [of the scheme], the main thing is to come up with an arrangement.”
The call ends with his colleague double-checking that he heard correctly, asking if the plan is to use those detained “from our guys, or the other ones … the Ukropy [a slur for Ukrainians].”
The man identified as an FSB officer responds, “Fuck, the locals” before appearing to add that they should “serve the motherland.”
The disturbing conversation comes as Russian authorities pull out all the stops to paint a glowing picture of occupied Mariupol, even as Ukrainian authorities sound the alarm over myriad war crimes committed by Putin’s troops there and say the Russian troops controlling the city are hiding the scale of death by dumping newly discovered bodies of civilians in landfills.
While the Russian military plans to send detained Ukrainians into literal minefields around the city, St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov says up to 1,000 Russians from his city are being bussed in to help with restoration efforts—including on a theater where Russian forces were accused of killing more than 600 civilians in an airstrike.
Wearing a blazer emblazoned with a large “Z,” Beglov claimed in an interview with the “Saint Petersburg” news channel on Thursday that Mariupol residents are “glad… they are with Russia.”
“They all speak in Russian and think in Russian,” he said of those in the city who endured weeks of relentless bombing by Russia.
