We shot from the tanks, machine guns and rifles. He warned us that although we’d be bombed and shot at, our aim was to get through.” Leonid: “When our commander warned us we would be shot, 100%. After his first fight, Leonid seems to have compassion for the young Ukrainian soldiers they’d just killed. 24, as his unit crossed into Ukraine from Belarus and decimated a detachment of Ukrainians at the border. Leonid’s introduction to war came on Feb. ONE: Kill if you don’t want to be killed. “Just don’t try to make it look like my child killed innocent people.” She declined to listen to any of the intercepts: “This is absurd,” she said. In the calls, there is an obvious moral dissonance between the way Leonid’s mother raised him and what he is seeing and doing in Ukraine. Still, she defended her son, insisting he never even came into contact with civilians in Ukraine. “My son just said one thing: ‘My conscience is clear. “No one thought it would be so terrible,” his mother said. Instead, Leonid’s unit got stuck around Bucha. But, like many others, she expected Russia to take parts of eastern Ukraine quickly. Leonid’s mother said Russia needs to protect itself from its enemies. “None of us had experienced anything like this, that your child would live in a time when he has to go and fight.” “I just wasn’t prepared emotionally for my child to go to war at the age of 19,” his mother told the AP in January. He was in debt and didn’t want to depend on his parents. Leonid became a soldier because he needed money. 25, The Associated Press and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting will broadcast never-before-heard audio of Russian soldiers as they confront - and perpetrate - the brutality of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The conversations have been edited for length and clarity. The AP verified these calls with the help of the Dossier Center, an investigative group in London funded by Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The AP spoke with the mothers of Ivan and Leonid, but couldn’t reach Maxim or his family. The AP established that they were in areas when atrocities were committed, but has no evidence of their individual actions beyond what they confess. The AP isn’t using their full names to protect their families in Russia. These are the stories of three of those men - Ivan, Leonid and Maxim. We listen as their mothers struggle to reconcile their pride and their horror, and as their wives and fathers beg them not to drink too much and to please, please call home. How modern weapons can obliterate the human body so there’s nothing left to bring home. How the scariest sound is not the whistle of a rocket flying past, but the silence that means it’s coming directly for you. They tell their mothers what this war actually looks like: About the teenage Ukrainian boy who got his ears cut off. Some said they were following orders to kill civilians or prisoners of war. Looting and drinking offered moments of rare reprieve. Violence that once would have been unthinkable became normal. The intercepts also show that as soldiers realized how much they’d been misled, they grew more and more afraid. They were told they’d be welcomed as heroes for liberating Ukraine from its Nazi oppressors and their Western backers, and that Kyiv would fall without bloodshed within a week. Many joined the military because they needed money and were informed of their deployment at the last minute. They show how deeply unprepared young soldiers - and their country - were for the war to come. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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