As Russian defense officials on Tuesday stayed mum on new defeats in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, a Russian soldier was caught calling home to tell his family the Russians are “losing” and have no way out.
That’s according to audio released by the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, which said it had intercepted a phone call between the soldier based in Kharkiv and his father.
“What’s up, how are things?” the father asks, prompting the blunt response: “Everything’s bad, pop.”
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“We’re losing, definitely, on top of that,” his son explains.
After his father seems taken aback by the news, the soldier continues to vent about the sad state of affairs.
“I’m telling you, seriously, you know how many injured we have? … We have nowhere to run. They just keep advancing, advancing, advancing.”
His father, still shocked, asks if the Russians have artillery and aviation, only to be told mortar fire has not been effective.
“We’re definitely surrounded, basically,” the soldier says, explaining that the only reason he and other Russian troops haven’t fled is because they know the way out will likely be mined.
“That’s why we’re here for now,” he says.
Ukrainian intelligence did not specify when the purported phone call took place, but the dispatch came out as Russia’s “special military operation” showed more and more signs of completely tanking.
“The Russians are in trouble,” one U.S. official told The Washington Post late Monday, after Ukrainian forces retook huge swathes of territory in the Kharkiv region in just a few days. Many Russian forces, apparently fully aware of their own military’s limitations, abandoned equipment as they ran for their lives, another official noted.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, announced on Facebook Tuesday that Ukrainian forces had reclaimed more than 300 settlements in the region since Sept. 6. She said that was the “confirmed” number, though “the real number … is almost twice as much.”
Russian defense officials, meanwhile, have offered comical explanations for the battlefield setbacks, claiming over the weekend that the retreat of forces from areas in Kharkiv was part of a “reshuffling” and “distracting” maneuver. On Tuesday, amid reports of new gains by Ukraine in the region, Russia’s Defense Ministry boasted of killing “foreign mercenaries” and state-run RIA Novosti bizarrely stressed that “at least one of them was dark-skinned.”
The Kremlin is also said to be resorting to increasingly desperate measures to keep the war going. Moscow recently turned to Tajikistan with hopes to purchase new ammunition for Soviet artillery systems, according to Ukrainian intelligence, and tried to recruit retired Tajik service members to join the battlefield.
And while Ukraine’s military was thought to have been outmanned by Russian troops at the start of the war, the tables now have apparently drastically turned: Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv, told the Financial Times that Ukraine likely has at least five times more troops on the ground now than Russia does.
“Russia lost the best parts of its army during the first weeks, and the remaining best parts are overexploited and exhausted,” Dimitri Minic, an expert on the Russian military at the French Institute of International Relations, told the FT.
Several Russian lawmakers have now begun calling for a full mobilization after defeats in the Kharkiv region.
After myriad reports in recent weeks that the Kremlin has resorted to scouring prisons for new recruits, it seems they have also now begun asking public workers to foot the bill for basic necessities to send to troops on the ground.
The independent news outlet iStories reported Tuesday that teachers outside Moscow have been asked to give up a part of their salaries to buy “socks and underwear” for soldiers.
“In the first days of September, at a meeting of teachers, we were told that we must voluntarily transfer 3,000 rubles each to support the Russian army, something like they don’t have underwear and socks,” one teacher was quoted saying. “It was clear that the director, when she was talking about this, felt uncomfortable. She said she was forced to say this and understands our plight, but we must understand the situation: ‘This is our citizens, our soldiers.’”
