Russian soldiers in Ukraine are said to be “dumping their stuff” and leaving after the military leadership stiffed them on special pay they were promised.
That’s according to several intercepted phone calls released by Ukrainian authorities Wednesday, all of which paint the same picture of a “total clusterfuck” among Russian troops, as one soldier put it.
In audio released by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, a man purported to be a Russian soldier is told by a woman back home to “limp” so that he’ll be rotated out.
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He says military leadership has promised “enormous cash payments,” but goes on to complain that “they say things here and then don’t fulfill a damn thing.”
“Everyone is outraged, entire battalions are starting revolts. The commanders promise us that they are giving us their word,” he said.
It was not clear where the purported Russian soldier was based in Ukraine, but his version of events was backed up by other intercepted communications.
In another chat said to be between a Russian soldier and his mother, he said the troops are getting fed up because they aren’t getting the payouts they were offered to serve.
“There is such fuckery going on here, I’m telling you, 600 people have resigned from our brigade throughout this time, well about that much, give or take. Everyone is going home, they are just dumping their stuff and saying, ‘I’m going home’ and then leaving,’” he said.
“There were rumors that they would pay [us], I thought 200,000 would be on my card, because so much time has already passed, and they didn’t pay a damn thing. Only the basic pay came,” he said.
When his mother offered to send him a flask of booze, he swatted down the idea, saying “management divvies everything up” among themselves.
Another guy in his unit, he said, had a package with money sent to him by all his relatives but “nothing from that package made it to him.”
Audio released by Ukraine’s Security Service is also said to capture a purported Russian soldier speaking of troops on the border with Ukraine refusing en masse to be deployed there.
He describes a “total clusterfuck” in Bryansk, where he says “everyone is refusing to go [to Ukraine], they don’t want to go. [Leadership] is writing up papers on them and firing them.”
His own commanding officer, he complains, “doesn’t give a fuck about his own personnel.”
Such reports of plummeting morale come as Vladimir Putin is said to be trying to gather enough troops to outnumber Ukrainian soldiers five-to-one in the eastern part of Ukraine, where the Kremlin claims to have shifted its focus.
Perhaps as part of that effort, billboards have been spotted on public transportation in Russia offering “short-term contracts” with Russia’s Armed Forces.
