Reuters reported this month that Russia has doubled its defence spending target this year to more than $100bn – a third of all public expenditure. In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the military had to learn from and fix the problems it had experienced in Ukraine, promising to provide the army with whatever it needed. Russia’s Ministry of Defence did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Neil Melvin, director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defence and security think tank headquartered in London, said the calls appeared to confirm some Russian forces were thrown into defensive operations with little preparation and were sustaining high casualties, sowing tensions between soldiers and commanders. The Ukrainian intelligence source said they illustrated the challenges facing Russian soldiers but did not elaborate on how the recordings were selected. Reuters was unable to determine how representative the intercepts are of the conditions in Russia’s armed forces. It has liberated a string of villages but retaken no major settlements so far and the front line has remained largely unchanged, frustrating Kyiv’s Western allies. Ukraine has acknowledged that its efforts to recapture territory have been hindered by vast Russian minefields and well-prepared defensive lines. While Russia has so far largely stemmed Ukraine’s military campaign and made some modest territorial gains of its own in places, the soldiers in the intercepts complain that their units have suffered from heavy losses, a lack of munitions, proper training and equipment, as well as poor morale.īoth Russia and Ukraine treat their losses as a state secret. The expletive-laden intercepts, shared with the Reuters news agency by a Ukrainian intelligence source, provide a rare – albeit partial – glimpse into the conditions of some Russian soldiers as Kyiv prosecuted a major counteroffensive, which started in early June, two military analysts told Reuters. The conversation was one excerpt from 17 phone calls placed by Russian soldiers fighting in the south and east of Ukraine that were intercepted in the first two weeks of July by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the country’s main intelligence agency. “No f*****g ammunition, nothing … Shall we use our fingers as bayonets?” “They are f*****g us up,” Andrey said by telephone on July 12, comparing the onslaught to the worst moments of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. They were so badly equipped, he said, it felt like the Soviet forces in World War II. Ukraine’s counteroffensive was in its second month when Andrey, a Russian soldier, called his wife to say his unit was taking heavy casualties.
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