Ukraine: Russian officer bemoans friendly fire

A senior Russian officer is recorded in intercepted communications with his superiors in Moscow admitting there are not enough tents for troops, half of some battlegroups have frostbite and that Russian jets have been bombing their own positions.

Russian fighter jets bomb a Ukrainian village.

The invasion of Ukraine is going “worse than Chechnya”, a Russian army officer says in intercepted communications that suggest troops cannot repatriate their dead and half of some battlegroups have frostbite.

In a conversation overheard by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the officer tells his superiors in Moscow that there are not enough tents for the troops and that Russian jets have been bombing their own positions. The briefing was given on an unsecured line near the coastal city of Mykolaiv and paints a bleak picture of life on the front line.

Elements of the Russian military are reliant on mobile phones and analogue walkie-talkies, making them vulnerable to interception by the Ukrainian intelligence services and radio enthusiasts.

The recording begins with the officer describing the situation. “In short, it’s shit here,” he says, before complaining that a Russian Grad rocket was fired at his troops a day earlier. “We asked if it was ours but no one could tell us.”

Soldiers are woefully unprepared for the cold weather, he says, adding that half of his forces have frostbitten feet. Images of Russian troops wearing stolen Ukrainian boots that are apparently better suited to the cold weather have been widely circulated online.

Ukrainian tanks firing at Russian forces on the streets of the besieged port city Mariupol.

The officer tells his superiors that on the fourth day of the war, the commander of the 49th combined arms army had said that they were “hours” from victory. Instead, his troops have not been supplied with enough tents or stoves to keep them warm and are now in desperate need of body armour as they come under attack from all sides.

He suggests that conditions in Ukraine are even worse than during the military campaign against the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya in the 1990s.

US intelligence echoed this assessment this week, giving a “conservative” estimate of more than 7,000 Russian servicemen killed since the invasion began on February 24, more than the official death toll for the two years of the first Chechen war.

Russian troops captured in Ukraine urged their people to rise up against President Vladimir Putin.

In the intercepted transmission the officer is told to “man up”, which angers him and prompts him to vent his frustration about a Russian plane dropping a bomb on his troops by mistake.

“Well, it happens,” the Moscow superior officer says.

The officer replies: “Some sort of f***ing way to say good morning!”

Mykolaiv is a strategic stronghold in the south of Ukraine that has been holding out against the invasion, in large part thanks to the resilience of residents who have joined the war effort. The city has been a key obstacle for Russian forces trying to advance west from Crimea to take Odesa, Ukraine’s main port on the Black Sea, which is home to its navy headquarters.

Unlike Mariupol and Kherson, two other coastal cities that have suffered significant damage, Odesa has so far been spared serious attacks. Analysts suggest that this is partly because of the robust resistance in Mykolaiv, about 70 miles to the east. Vitaliy Kim, the regional governor, said on Saturday: “There are lots of dead Russian orcs.”

THE TIMES