Russian soldiers send home looted goods

Russian soldiers have been photographed wrapping up and sending home looted washing machines, airconditioners and e-scooters.

An apartment building in Kharkiv plundered by looting Russian soldiers. Picture: AFP

Russian soldiers have been photographed wrapping up and sending looted washing machines, airconditioners and e-scooters to their families from a Belarusian post office.

Leaked CCTV video shows more than a dozen fighters in uniform packaging about 2000kg worth of televisions, clothing, ­precious metals and other personal belongings that investigators claim were pillaged from Ukrainian homes.

One captured lieutenant was found to have hoarded iPhones, jewellery, watches and makeup.

Others, whose calls to their wives in Russia were intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence, have been heard boasting about targeting apartments and using looted goods to pay off their mortgages.

Belarusian activists obtained three hours of video of Russian and Belarusian soldiers excitedly wrapping items and sending parcels from a delivery service at Mozyr, a city in the south of Belarus near the Ukrainian border.

Items were said to have been sent to locations in Russia including Moscow, Omsk, Ulyanovsk and Novosibirsk.

Aric Toler, a researcher at Bellingcat, the investigative journalism website, tweeted: “A certain Yevgeny sent 450kg of cargo, including music equipment back home to the Altai Krai. Nikolai from Ussuriysk (near Vladivostok) sent 140kg of airconditioners and spare parts back home.”

Many phone conversations of Russian occupiers have been intercepted over the past five weeks revealing brazen attitudes to theft. Some have joked that the invasion has been “like a trip to a supermarket”. In one call, a soldier’s wife asks him for a laptop, sneakers and a suit of the right size. “The Russian soldier has to get all these from captured Ukrainian homes,” Ukraine’s SBU security service said. “He brags that he has already got her some good cosmetics and T-shirts, and his colleagues are carrying whole bags of loot!”

All those on CCTV are clearly identifiable, prompting online sleuths to share personal ­infor­mation about them, including their names and phone numbers.

Stealing is becoming an “increasingly massive” activity from the invading forces, according to Ukrainian officials. “This is evidenced by virtually all of the occupiers’ conversations intercepted by the SBU.”

In other conversations published by the agency, Russians discuss stealing local alcohol. “Have you ever drunk absinthe?” a soldier asks his girlfriend, adding: “We robbed a store yesterday: we got beer and all sorts of shit. We’ll drink beer. The beer here is just really f..king great!”

One Russian soldier in Irpin was thought to have been killed after replacing a plate in his body armour with a stolen MacBook.

“The SBU has ample evidence that looting among the occupiers has reached such proportions that it will soon be their only purpose in Ukraine,” the security service claimed.

“The invaders are openly bragging to their relatives about their ‘achievements’.”

The Times