- Audio shows Russian officers bad-mouthing the leaders of the invasion of Ukraine.
- They use harsh curse words to describe Vladimir Putin, Sergei Shoigu, and Alexander Dvornikov.
- The audio was obtained by Ukrainian intelligence and passed to to US-funded Radio Svoboda.
Intercepted recordings shows Russian military officers cursing out Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders in charge of the invasion of Ukraine.
The audio recordings come from an unspecified Ukrainian intelligence agency, which intercepted the phone calls, and were provided to the Radio Svoboda investigative project "Schemes."
Excerpts of the intercepted calls were published on YouTube on Monday.
In the audio, a senior Russian officer can be heard bad-mouthing Russia's minister of defense Sergei Shoigu. Shoigu, a close ally of Putin, was one of the few Kremlin insiders who made the decision to invade Ukraine, Bloomberg reported in April.
"Shoigu is completely fucking incompetent," he says in the recording. "Just a fucking showman, for fuck's sake," he adds.
According to the investigation, the officer was Lieutenant Colonel Vladimirovich Vlasov.
Vlasov also calls Gen. Alexander Dvornikov, Russia's top commander in Ukraine, a "complete and utter imbecile" and a "brainless fucking idiot" in the recordings.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Dvornikov hasn't been seen for two weeks, leading some US officials to speculate that he may have been relieved of his post.
Vlasov was speaking to a Russian military medic, Colonel Vitaliy Kovtun, according to Radio Svoboda. Kovtun, per the recordings, refers to both Shoigu and Putin as a "fucking cunt."
Radio Svoboda contacted both men for comment.
Kovtun took the phone call and responded by calling the journalist a "fucking cunt" and threatening to report him to Russia's FSB security agency.
Vlasov answered the phone call but declined to offer a comment. He refused to answer follow-up calls, according to Radio Svoboda.
