World News

Archived version

"We lost territory while they sent Moscow encouraging news”: Russian official blasts superiors in leaked call amid Ukraine's incursion in Russia

It was an epic rant against corrupt and incompetent officials worthy of Gogol or perhaps even Servant of the People, Volodymyr Zelensky’s career-making satire about a schoolteacher who becomes president by angrily telling the truth about the state of his nation in a classroom video that goes viral. But our hero is Aleksandr Garkavenko, 40, the head of Goncharovka local authority council — a suburb of the town of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, the region now under increasing Ukrainian control after a stunning cross-border invasion on Aug. 6. Garkavenko is explaining the backwardness and graft of his own petty officialdom. Kursk, he says, is riddled with morons, clock-watching “roosters” (“bitches” in the penal sense of the word), liars and buffoons, all of whom, he insists, require not jail sentences but serious psychiatric interventions.

Garkavenko was having what he believed was a telephone conversation with higher-ups in the Russian government. He wasn’t, but his misbelief seems to have loosened Garkavenko’s tongue to a sufficient degree that we learn much about the chaos in Kursk in the initial days of Ukraine’s invasion of Russia, which has so far claimed for Kyiv 1,150 square kilometers (445 square miles) of territory and counting, as per a recent statement from Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Some examples from the audio of Garkavenko’s call, dated Aug. 13:

Look what else, during the evacuation from the residential areas there were several servicemen, conscripts. I was amazed when they, together with civilians, were crossing the river, fording, near Plekhovo we were meeting them, they had two submachine-gun magazines. I say, 'Guy, excuse me, is that all that's left?' He said, 'No, that's all we had — two magazines.'

And he said: 'The command told us' — this is what the conscript was saying — 'to hold out for a day.' But we evacuated them from there on the third day already. That is, they were wandering around residential areas, they were wandering through the forest, they came across us, and we told them, 'There are Ukrainians behind, run with us.' And that's how the locals saved the two soldiers. And they told that story. No one was communicating with them whatsoever. As soon as it all started at night, they were told: 'Don't worry, hold out for a day, and everything will be fine.'”

[...]

There was not any authority active in [the city of] Sudzha. Everyone was, including the head of the district, in Bolshoe Soldatskoe [a village 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, from Sudzha ...] But what struck me next? I turned on the TV in the evening to see what was going on, because we ourselves had no information. [Kursk Region acting governor Alexei] Smirnov was reporting that everything’s fine, the situation was [apparently] under control.

[...]

I arrive in Belovsky District, from there we begin the evacuation of people from the outskirts of the Belovsky District; we bring humanitarian aid there, and take from there whoever wants to leave. But I want to tell you something else. We arrive in [the village of] Plekhovo today, and tomorrow the Ukrainians are already there. We get to [the village of] Ulanok. The next day, the Ukrainians are already there. We get to [the village of] Vorobzha, the next day they are already there. That’s the scale of their advance.”

[...]

I was surprised. I... Well, how should I say this? I mean, I'm a local, but I don't know my way around the area as well as they [the advancing Ukrainian army] do. I was just amazed, one guy explained to me that they'd been studying the entire area with drones for the last two months. I said, 'Damn, how quickly they move through the forests and along country roads.' You see, they didn't always go along the main road, I mean the federal, paved one. That's it. That really surprises me.”

[...]

Everyone is talking about betrayal. I mean all those civilians who have lived through all this and continue to live through it, about betrayal. But I will tell you honestly, my opinion is that it's pure corrupt sloppiness. Sloppiness is what it is. And literally two weeks earlier, in the office of the head of the [Sudzhansky District] administration, [Aleksandr] Bogachev, I had a conflict with a [Russian] colonel, as he was introduced to me, the commander soldiers in the border areas of the Sudzhansky District or some other. He refused to give his last name. When I said: 'Introduce yourself,' he refused, and Bogachev was there.

[...]

I have a feeling that these people [Russian officials], who do not have any limits of corruption, are mentally abnormal. If you have any opportunity, do not put them in jail. I understand that our system will never bring these people to justice. Send them for medical treatment.

After all, civilians are suffering, but they don’t care about anything, they sit in their offices, they’re not afraid of anything. And the most important thing is that they ignore everything happening on the ground, they simply ignore it. I will tell you honestly, in each municipality, the heads of the village councils dress, feed and shoe all the soldiers from the first days [of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine].”

[...]

Do you understand? This is just something I don't know what to think about, and I think what should happen in the country so that all these roosters ['petukh' or 'rooster' is Russian prison slang for a passive homosexual who is routinely sexually assaulted by other men – The Insider] who have been sitting [in their seats] for 30 years understand that they need to leave because the war has come, you understand? No, they’ve found loopholes in war where they feel comfortable.'”

[...]

It seems to me that the [Russian military] is looking around more to survive themselves. The situation [in the Belgorod region] there is so chaotic.

[...]