Ukrainian intelligence on Thursday released audio of an intercepted phone call between a Russian soldier and his wife back home, telling her they’ve been racking up the KIAs against those slowing down Putin’s efforts to contain a furious counteroffensive from Kyiv, the Daily Beast reports.
The kicker is that, according to this solider they’re shooting their own conscripts attempting to flee the action. “They brought the inmates here… from prison. But they led them somewhere way up front. And we’re sitting here as a retreat-blocking detachment, fuck. If someone runs back, we snuff them out… That’s how we have it set up. We sit on the second line, guarding the first. Behind us, there’s another line. If you go that way, you also won’t make it. So it’s impossible to run away. They shoot their own,” the Russian soldier told his wife, adding he found a bloody but warm jacket.
“If someone goes that way, you need to wipe him out,” he said. No reason to disbelieve him. Although the 2001 World War II epic Enemy at The Gates reportedly overdramatized the Soviet use of blocking detachments to prevent retreats, there is certainly a tradition in Russian military history.