Russian soldiers are looking for Ukrainian ammunition so they can shoot themselves in the foot and be sent home, a Russian phone call revealed that the soldier was intercepted.
Vladimir Putin’s forces sent to fight in Ukraine are looking for Ukrainian ammunition so they can shoot themselves in the foot and be sent home, according to an intercepted Russian phone call.
In a call that Yurta heard a Russian soldier tell his mother that his unit wanted to find some 7.62 bullets made in Ukraine, instead of 5.62 mm ammunition used by the Russian AK-74 rifles, to injure them while firing on foot, adding that “others have already done it”.
He explained that his fellow soldiers hoped to shoot each other in the legs so that they would wear them, and then send them to the hospital in Budnovsk, a town in southern Russia.
The audio file released by the Ukrainian security service also claimed that 120 people had already been evacuated to the hospital with wounds and that 350 had been sent back to Russia in coffins.
The Pentagon estimates that at least 7,000 Russian soldiers have now been killed in the fighting, and between 14,000 and 21,000 more have been wounded. A number that makes up nearly one-fifth of the 150,000 troops Putin mustered on the border before giving the order to attack on February 24.
The soldier, whose name was not released, was heard telling his mother that his team was no longer combatant, that the Ukrainians had blown everything up, and that if they attacked them now, they would die. His recorded mother tells him, “I want you to go to your unit directly, tell them I was left alone and I need your help.” But the soldier warns that his commanders will not send him back and claimed that people who refused to serve had already received eight years in prison.
The Pentagon estimates that Russia in total has lost up to 28,000 troops, both killed and wounded, all during three weeks of fighting in Ukraine. NATO has lost about twice as much in Afghanistan over two decades.
The losses are now so severe that US intelligence believes some Russian units cannot continue to fight. This is in line with estimates by British intelligence, which said on Thursday that Russia’s invasion had stopped “on all fronts with minimal progress by land, sea or air” in the last 24 hours, while it continued to “suffer heavy casualties”.
The only thing left for Putin is bombing from the air by missiles and by the Air Force.