2,000 intercepted phone calls from Russian soldiers in Ukraine offer an intimate new perspective on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s year-old war, seen through the eyes of Russian soldiers themselves
That’s the human mystery at the heart of 2,000 intercepted phone calls from Russian soldiers in Ukraine. These calls obtained by The Associated Press offer an intimate new perspective on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s year-old war, seen through the eyes of Russian soldiers themselves.
They tell their mothers what this war actually looks like: About the teenage Ukrainian boy who got his ears cut off. How the scariest sound is not the whistle of a rocket flying past, but the silence that means it’s coming directly for you. How modern weapons can obliterate the human body so there’s nothing left to bring home.
“I just wasn’t prepared emotionally for my child to go to war at the age of 19,” his mother told the AP in January. “None of us had experienced anything like this, that your child would live in a time when he has to go and fight.” She said everything was calm, civil. There was no trouble at the checkpoints. Nothing bad happened. The war didn’t change her son.
When Leonid tells his mother casually about looting, at first she can’t believe he’s stealing. But it’s become normal for him.Leonid: “Look, mom, I’m looking at tons of houses — I don’t know, dozens, hundreds — and they’re all empty. Everyone ran away.” He promises to bring home a collection of bullets for the kids. “Trophies from Ukraine,” he calls them.“Of course, you’ll come,” his mother says. “No doubts. You’re my beloved. Of course, you’ll come. You are my happiness.”
Ivan: “We are really at the front line. As far out as you could be. Kyiv is 15 kilometers from us. It is scary, Olya. It really is scary.”As things get worse for Ivan in Ukraine, his mother’s patriotism deepens and her rage grows. The family has relatives in Kyiv, but seems to believe this is a righteous war against Nazi oppression in Ukraine — and the dark hand of the United States they see behind Kyiv’s tough resistance. She says she’ll go to Ukraine herself to fight.
He says they’re alone out there and exposed. Communications are so bad they’re taking more fire from their own troops than from the Ukrainians. “I wanted to give it to normal families with kids, but the people out there were drunks,” he tells his wife. But Maxim and his mother believe it’s the Ukrainians who are deluded by fake news and propaganda, not them. The best way to end the war, his mother says, is to kill the presidents of Ukraine and the United States.
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