26/ "Constant fighting. Sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more. They don't talk about losses in the news at all. And they must be assessed as catastrophic. They don't feel sorry for people at all. It's like they're not people. And this makes everyone around me go wild."
27/ The soldier suggests that his unit is deliberately hiding the scale of its desertions β some of whom may have surrendered β likely to avoid commanders facing embarassing questions, in an example of the Russian military's ingrained culture of lying.
"[These are] cards of my missing guys, who were in the group at first, and then they were simply deleted! I accidentally managed to save a few. This is only a small number, they are simply cleared from the database so as not to be looked for."