Russian soldier says commander shot himself just to leave war: Ukraine

• An audio recording released by Ukrainian officials shows the arrest of a Russian soldier speaking to his mother.
• The soldier told her that he and others in the army did not want to go to war in Ukraine.
• His mother pressured him for his patriotism and said that he needed to defend Russia.

A Russian soldier in Ukraine told his mother by phone that his boss shot himself to go home, according to an audio recording released by Ukrainian officials.

A recording of the intercepted phone call was released on Saturday Facebook By the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

The soldier who says he is 20 can be heard complaining to his mother that the war won’t end soon and that he doesn’t want to be there.

“This Ukraine does not interest me at all. I need to go back and resign,” he said, explaining that many other Russian soldiers did not want to be there either.

His mother pressed him about whether there were “patriots” in the Russian army who would encourage other soldiers not to surrender.

The soldier replied, “Mom, my second platoon battery commander shot him in the leg to get out of here, first! What are we talking about even here? He served in Chechnya.”

Then his mother asked what would happen if the West decided to advance towards Russia: “Who will defend Russia then? Who, tell me? They will kill us all, and a fourth world war will break out and Russia will lose in it!”

“Well, Putin might think twice,” said the soldier, adding that “we have no munitions or people, no orders from Moscow!”

The soldier also said that the conflict was due to the invasion of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “No one has come before us!”

His mother defended Putin and said he did not invade but was advancing toward the popular republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, the two Kremlin-backed breakaway states in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

“I don’t know… We didn’t even come close,” said the soldier.

multiple Reports Russian soldiers have been described as not wanting to go to war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said early in the war that The Russian forces were “tired” and “disappointed”. Last week, a Russian soldier told the Guardian He wanted to leave the army Because there was no point in fighting in Ukraine.

Since launching a large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Russian forces have suffered great losses and have been pushed back from the surrounding areas. Kyiv And Kharkiv After unsuccessful attempts to advance.

Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said on Saturday that his country is preparing for a new, protracted phase of the war.

Translations by Nikita Ilyich Angarsky.