A Russian soldier threatened fellow soldiers with being sent on a “meat” assault as punishment for desertion in a reported intercepted phone call released by Ukrainian Military Intelligence (HUR) on Monday, Jan. 20.

“You f**k around too much, Dimon. You just don’t understand. They’ll catch you, f**king hell, and the commander will just say – f**k it – [Go] on the assault! That’ll be fun, right?” the Russian soldier says.

The voice seems to attempt to convince his comrade not to desert with two other soldiers.

“Where are you planning to go with the fighters? F**k, if you don’t cut it out, you’ll get a beating right now. Where the f**k do you think you’ll go?”

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HUR ended its post in its customary fashion: “Every war criminal will face just retribution.”

Last year Kyiv Post reported that Russian troops have likely suffered significant losses of equipment and personnel in the Toretsk sector in the Donetsk region.

“Personnel are thrown into ‘meat’ assaults. The wounded and killed are replaced with seconded military personnel,” Atesh partisans said.

Earlier last year, Kyiv Post interviewed Maria* who works as one of Ukrainian intelligence’s professional eavesdroppers and spoke about the shocking things she hears.

Russia regularly dismisses the content of intercepted calls published by Ukraine, saying they are faked, a claim Kyiv Post put to Maria. She said: “They are all are real even though they might seem insane. Sometimes I can’t believe the words I’m hearing myself, but we have what we have.”

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Kyiv Post regularly reposts some of the most revealing and shocking intercepted conversations. Check out more intercepted conversations:

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