Russian soldier calls to his mother.

She said that she wants to go and petition for his return because she’s alone and needs assistance. He says they won’t release him, and they’ve already given 8-year prison sentences to soldiers who departed.

He says there are 120 wounded and 350 dead, that his brigade is almost demolished, and will soon be attacked and destroyed. They have no more tanks or anything. Ukrainians destroyed everything with mortar attacks.

He says “I’ll tell you a secret,” we want to find Ukrainian-caliber ammunition and shoot each other in the legs so that we get sent to the hospital. He says “may god let us live long enough to do this.”

Ukrainian security services have release many such intercepts. While I believe them to be authentic, we do not know for certain whether or not these are Ukrainian information operations or not, and we also do know how prevalent the demoralization is in Russian ranks.

For what it’s worth, I think it’s real, and consistent with what we know of historic Russian offensives. The West cannot comprehend the dark depths of Russian nihilism.