Russia’s Vladimir Putin is calling for 134,500 more conscripts even as more of his own soldiers appear to turn against him for humiliating losses in Ukraine.

According to a decree published on a Russian government portal on Thursday, the troops will be called up for duty from April 1 to July 15. The Department of Defense promised earlier this week that they “will not be sent to any hot spots” and that all those called up in last spring’s draft will be sent home.

But those assurances seem likely to be eclipsed by a slew of reports that Russia’s senseless war on Ukraine has been tainted with lies from top to bottom, with Russian troops claiming they were misled into the war and Putin’s own advisers shielding him from the scale of the devastating losses.

Even as Putin signed the decree on Thursday, Ukraine’s security services released an intercept supposedly capturing a Russian soldier denouncing the incompetence of his own army.

“Our brigade has completely screwed up. There are losses, many wounded, ”he tells his wife.

When asked if the casualties are the result of someone messing up, he offers a blunt answer: “The whole army with us are stupid morons.”

“There’s no telling why we’re even here,” he said.

Another recording shared by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, captures a man identified as a Russian soldier named Maksim asking his mother what is being shown on Russian television, and if there are any reports” they say they’re going to change anything.” ”

“Everything is going badly, there are hardly any of us left. They said we would continue until the end, until everyone was killed,” he told his mother.

When asked if his superior officer is still in the unit, he replies, “No, he dumped us yesterday. We all died in the water if he left.

The new recordings come just hours after Western officials said there was growing evidence of disarray and disillusionment among Russian troops, with Britain’s spy chief citing reports of troops “refusing to respond”. ‘carrying out orders, sabotaging their own equipment and even accidentally shooting down their own aircraft’. ”

It was in this context that Russian defense officials said they would reduce hostilities around the Ukrainian capital and instead focus on the east of the country – an announcement that was met with mockery and skepticism among Ukrainian officials, who said the Kremlin was trying to move on. their many setbacks in a “mission accomplished” scenario.

Perhaps as part of this long game, the Kremlin has now reportedly begun to implement plans to send FSB psychologists to Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine where residents continue to resist Russian forces that have took over after the February 24 invasion.

“To implement a scenario of creating another pseudo-republic on the territory of the Kherson region, work is underway by employees of the FSB, 652 information and psychological operations group and officers of the 12th main direction of the [Russian] General Staff,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement on Thursday.

Ukrainian officials said the FSB effort was an attempt to brainwash residents into supporting their new Russian authorities.

Russian law enforcement officials, prosecutors and judges are also reportedly on their way to the occupied territories of Ukraine, and Russian police officers have reportedly been invited on “business trips” to parts of Donbass, eastern Ukraine.