Russian soldiers in Ukraine are ‘shooting themselves in the leg’ so they can be discharged, reports say

The intercepted call is yet to be independently verified

Russian soldiers are now reportedly so desperate for the fighting to end that they are debating shooting themselves and each other in the leg in order to go home, according to a recently surfaced video. In supposedly intercepted audio released by Belarusian media source NEXTA and subsequently reposted by the Ukraine Security Service's official YouTube page, a member of the Russian army can be heard telling his mother of their prospective plans. As of writing, this footage is yet to be independently verified but has been shared via a variety of credible sources. The full call - with English subtitles - can be heard below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjWaJKtdpgA As you can read in the translated captions, the Russian occupier confesses to his mum that he and other members of his brigade discussed shooting each other's legs in order to be bandaged and sent to the hospital. "Do you know what we wanted to do? I'll tell you this in confidence. We wanted to shoot each other's legs with Ukrainian 7.62 rounds and go back the hospital here in Budensovsk, as the boys did." In the minute and a half transmission, the combatant can also be heard revealing that those who refuse to fight will be given eight years in prison and that his brigade is "not combat-ready anymore", with the Ukrainians having destroyed their tanks and taken out 350 of them. Not only does the Russian soldier go on to beg God to "let [him] live to do this", but the reference to "the boys" in Budenovsk (a town in Stavropol Kraia - a federal subject of Russia) seems to suggest that other members of the army have already taken such drastic actions to escape the fighting. It has been widely reported that Russian troops have been dropping their weapons and expressing their desire for the invasion to end and stories like this serve as a reminder that this is Putin's war, not Russia's.

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