More and more of Putin's own soldiers are turning on him, even as Russia calls up another 134,500 conscripts.
According to a decree published on a Russian government portal, the troops will be called in on April 1. The Defense Ministry promised earlier this week that they will not be sent to hot spots, and that all those who were called up in the spring will be sent home.
The war against Ukraine has been marred by lies from the top down, with Russian troops claiming they were misled into the war, and Putin's own advisers said to be shielding him.
Even as Putin signed the decree on Thursday, the Security Service of Ukraine released an intercept call saying to capture a Russian soldier railing against the incompetence of his own army.
Our brigade is completely shit. He tells his wife that there are losses.
The whole army with us is stupid morons, he said when asked if the losses were a result of someone messing up.
It's unclear why we are here.
Another recording was shared by an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, who captured a man who was identified as a Russian soldier asking his mother if there were any reports on Russian television.
Everything is bad, almost no one is left. He tells his mother that they will keep going until everyone is dead.
He denied that his senior officer was still with the unit. We are all dead in the water if he left.
The new recordings come just hours after Western officials said there was growing evidence of disarray and disillusionment among Russian troops, with Britain's spy chief citing reports of troops sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their equipment.
Reporting by Meduza was in line with Western assessments. Citing three sources close to the presidential administration, the news outlet reported that Russian military officials finally came to terms with the fact that they wouldn't be able to seize control of Kyiv by late March. According to Meduza, they were certain that the special operation would be quick and that the biggest problem would be organizing work by the new administrations.
After realizing the full scale of military setbacks and the damage caused by Western sanctions, they decided to shift their focus to the eastern part of the country.
The country will not be able to live normally under such sanctions, one source was quoted as saying, when Putin was personally presented with the reality at the end of March.
The Russian leader hasn't made a final decision on what he's going to do next, and plenty of those close to him are pushing him to go full steam ahead with the onslaught against Ukraine.
The presidential administration is concerned about how a truce with Ukraine will affect Putin's approval ratings.
The citizens were upset by the propaganda. A decision is made to stop at the territory of the Donbas. What about the Nazis? Are we still fighting them? One source told Meduza that this word has been hammered into people so much that they can't imagine how one can stop in Donbas without losing approval ratings.
According to reports, the Kremlin is planning to send psychologists from the FSB to Kherson, a city in the south of Ukraine where residents are still resisting the Russians.
There is work being done by employees of the FSB, 652 groups of information and psychological operations and officers of the 12th Main Directorate of the Russian Federation to create another pseudo-republic in the Kherson region.
The Ukrainian officials said that the FSB is trying to brainwash residents into supporting the new Russian authorities.
Russian law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and judges are said to be on their way to occupied territories in Ukraine, with reports of Russian police officers being asked to take business trips to the east of the country.
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