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submitted 11 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

In audio intercepts from the front lines in Ukraine, Russian soldiers speak in shorthand of 200s to mean dead, 300s to mean wounded. The urge to flee has become common enough that they also talk of 500s — people who refuse to fight.

As the war grinds into its second winter, a growing number of Russian soldiers want out, as suggested in secret recordings obtained by The Associated Press of Russian soldiers calling home from the battlefields of the Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.

The calls offer a rare glimpse of the war as it looked through Russian eyes — a point of view that seldom makes its way into Western media, largely because Russia has made it a crime to speak honestly about the conflict in Ukraine. They also show clearly how the war has progressed, from the professional soldiers who initially powered Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion to men from all walks of life compelled to serve in grueling conditions.

“There’s no f------ ‘dying the death of the brave’ here,” one soldier told his brother from the front in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. “You just die like a f------ earthworm.”

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[-] ivanafterall@kbin.social 13 points 11 months ago

It's a general enough trend that they needed to create a special code for the phenomenon.

[-] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago

I'm sure they had the code already, the fact that the US has "section 8" doesn't mean they're all going crazy.

[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

I think they had a code for AWOL, but "refuse to fight" doesn't sound like something that should have been common and thought upfront. Although maybe it was, I got confused 😕

this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
468 points (97.2% liked)

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