Furious Russian military officials caught on tape cursing Putin and his defense minister for Ukraine debacle: report

According to a report from the Daily Beast’s Allison Quinn, Radio Free Europe’s Ukrainian service obtained a recording of two high-ranking military officials swearing and raging at the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine invasion that has turned into a quagmire despite predictions by Kremlin officials it would meet little resistance.

The report notes the two officials are reportedly Colonel Maksim Vlasov and Colonel Vitaly Kovtun who, based upon their comments, are exceedingly unhappy with the Kremlin as they commiserated with each other

According to the Beast report, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was a specific target of their tirade with Vlasov stating, “There are horrible losses of our guys, f*ck. And you know, I am familiar with military history a bit, and I compare this to the f*cking Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940. It’s f*cking one and the same,” before referring to Shoigu as a “incompetent f*cking layman,” and adding, “This is not his f*cking thing. He’s just a f*cking showman.”

That, in turn, led Kovtun to reply, “Shoigu is f*cking shit. [There are] no contracted forces. Of course not! Why would there f*cking be? They paid them 30,000 rubles [$490], where are they going to get contractees?” the Beast reports.

Putin was also an object of their ire as they complained about military strategy with Kovtun complaining that Russian military has had its hands tied.

According to the transcript, he raged, “A f*cking rocket should fly into the Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv. That’s it, f*ck it. Why didn’t [a rocket] f*cking fly? I don’t f*cking get it, you’re f*cked, Putin—motherf*cker! Why didn’t a rocket fly into Kyiv, so they’d think… f*ck, yes, for f*ck’s sake there’s something wrong… something hasn’t been done the right way.”

The report notes that the Verkhovna Rada is Ukraine’s Parliament.