Untrained and unprepared soldiers, a lack of military equipment and a dire shortage of supplies under incompetent leadership paint a picture of Russian forces invading Ukraine, as Russian infantrymen themselves show in telephone conversations with their relatives from the front. The New York Times reveals the contents of these conversations, which were intercepted by the Ukrainian authorities.

Kyiv was supposed to fall within a few days in March last year. And yet, due to tactical errors and stubborn Ukrainian resistance, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s devastating advance was quickly halted, and his troops were stuck on the outskirts of the city for most of March.

From trenches, ditches and occupied houses in the Buka area, a Kyiv suburb famous for mass graves discovered there, Russian soldiers disobeyed orders, making unauthorized calls from their mobile phones to their wives, girlfriends, boyfriends and their parents hundreds of kilometers from the front line.

As part of a months-long investigation into the atrocities committed during the Russian campaign to seize Kyiv, New York Times reporters have exclusively received more than 4,000 Russian military phone records that Ukrainian law enforcement intercepted in the region. The results of the study reveal and explain the colossal failure of the Russian troops.

“What else do they say? When will Putin end this? Ilya anxiously asks his girlfriend to return to Russia. To the answer that everything is going according to plan, Ilya directly says: “He is making a big mistake!”

In their conversations, soldiers complain about strategic mistakes and severe shortages of supplies. They confess to arrests and murders of civilians and openly admit to looting Ukrainian homes and businesses. Many say they want to terminate their military contracts and counter the propaganda being broadcast by the Russian media at home with the harsh reality of the war around them.

“We cannot take Kyiv, we will only capture some villages,” Alexander admits, no longer doubting: “Putin is a fool, he wants to take Kyiv, but there is no such thing“, he admits.

“We wanted it right away, but it didn’t work out,” another Sergey tells his girlfriend.

They express their surprise at the “professional” Ukrainian forces, often using the term “Khokhol” as an insult to Ukrainians. A man named Eugene says directly: “We are losing.”

“Our people are tired of us, they consider us slobs,” Nikita says to his girlfriend. In his Serhiy says that “some people get weapons from dead Ukrainians, they have better NATO weapons than we do.”

Back in Russia, the phone calls show that the rise in deaths is starting to reverberate in small towns where militias are heavy, where close-knit communities and families exchange news of casualties.

Relatives describe rows of bodies and coffins arriving in their cities as soldiers warn that more bodies will soon return. A woman tells her husband that a military funeral was held every day this week. Shocked, some families say they have started seeing psychologists.

“Vanya, coffins continue to be brought here. We bury one person after another. This is a nightmare, ”his girlfriend in Russia tells Ivan. And Maxim’s girlfriend says that “some women are in despair, they even wrote letters to Putin.”

When the Ukrainians liberated the occupied territories in the suburbs of Kyiv in the spring, Russian atrocities in places like Buka were exposed. When the photographs and reporting caused a global outcry in early April, Putin and other senior Russian leaders repeatedly denied that war crimes had taken place and called the atrocities “a provocation and a fake.”

But during the occupation of these areas in March, Putin’s own troops spoke with horror about what they saw.

“Scattered around are human limbs, already swollen. Nobody collects them. They are not ours, they are citizens,” Alexander says to his relative with horror.

In a confession that could amount to war crimes, a soldier named Sergei confesses to his girlfriend that his captain ordered the execution of three men who “passed by our warehouse” and that he became a “murderer”.

He adds that they had to execute many armed men: “We detained them, undressed them and checked all their clothes. Then a decision had to be made whether to let them go. If we let them go, they could give way to us… Therefore, it was decided to shoot them in the forest,” says Sergey.

When asked why they were not taken prisoner, the answer is typical: “Why do we need to feed them when we don’t have enough food even for ourselves.” A little later, he will talk about the “mountain of corpses in the forest.” For the first time I see so many heaped corpses that it is not clear where they end.

Throughout the stalled offensive — and before Russian forces finally pulled back at the end of March — phone calls signal a moral crisis. Impatience, fear and weariness prevail as the soldiers describe the army in disarray. “Honestly, no one understands why we have to fight this war,” another Sergei tells his girlfriend.

Other soldiers complain of low temperatures and frostbite, poor sleeping conditions and logistical problems. The militants say they raided a butcher’s shop and killed chickens, pigs and… an ostrich for food.

Many soldiers express contempt for their commanders, who are held responsible for deadly tactical decisions. And some brazenly criticize their highest “boss”, President Putin.

“I’m quitting, it won’t work like that again! I’ll get a permanent job and my son won’t join the army either, 100%. Tell him to be a doctor,” Vadim tells his wife, “and colleagues describe the looting of their fellow soldiers, saying that they steal everything they can find, even large-screen TVs, and send them back to Russia.