Demoralized Russian troops blast leaders

 Daily Beast:

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Even as Putin signed the decree on Thursday, Ukraine’s Security Service released an intercepted call said to capture a Russian soldier railing against the incompetence of his own army.

“Our brigade has totally shit themselves. There are losses, many wounded,” he tells his wife.

Asked if the losses are a result of someone screwing up, he offers a blunt response: “The whole army with us is stupid morons.”

“It’s unclear why we are even here,” he says.

Another recording shared by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, captures a man identified as a Russian soldier named Maksim asking his mother what is being shown on Russian television, and if there are reports “they’re saying they will change anything.”

“Everything’s bad, almost no one among us is left. They said we will keep going until the very end, until everyone is killed,” he tells his mother.

Asked if his senior officer was still with the unit, he replies: “No, he dumped us yesterday. We’re all dead in the water if he left.”

We Are Falling Into Putin’s Evil Little Trap Again

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 “refusing to carry out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft.”

Reporting by Meduza on Thursday largely aligned 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. (Just a month earlier, according to Meduza, they were all but certain that the “special operation” would be quick, and the biggest headache would be organizing work by the “new administrations” put in place by Russia).

But they decided to shift their focus to the Donbas in the country’s east after realizing the full scale of military setbacks—and the damage wrought on the economy by Western sanctions.

Putin was personally presented with the reality of the sanctions only at the end of March, when officials showed him “the country will not be able to live normally under such sanctions,” one source was quoted telling Meduza.
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There is more.

There is no central leadership for the Russian Army in Ukraine.  The war is being run out of Moscow.   There is little to no coordination with various units and weapon systems.  I recently heard an interview with a Russian fighter complaining about the operations where he used the American acronym FUBAR.  It was originally used by communication people who got a message that was totally garbled and stands for Fuck Up Beyond All Recognition.  That seems consistent with what reporters are now seeing on the ground.