KYIV — The Ukrainian capital was supposed to fall in a matter of days.

But plagued by tactical errors and fierce Ukrainian resistance, President Vladimir V. Putin’s destructive advance quickly stalled, and his forces became bogged down for most of March on the city’s outskirts.

From trenches, dugouts and in occupied homes in the area around Bucha, a western suburb of Kyiv, Russian soldiers disobeyed orders by making unauthorized calls from their cellphones to their wives, girlfriends, friends and parents hundreds of miles from the front line.

Someone else was listening in: the Ukrainian government.

The New York Times has exclusively obtained recordings of thousands of calls that were made throughout March and intercepted by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies from this pivotal location.

Reporters verified the authenticity of these calls by cross-referencing the Russian phone numbers with messaging apps and social media profiles to identify soldiers and family members. The Times spent almost two months translating the recordings, which have been edited for clarity and length.

The calls, made by dozens of fighters from airborne units and Russia’s National Guard, have not previously been made public and give an inside view of a military in disarray just weeks into the campaign. The soldiers describe a crisis in morale and a lack of equipment, and say they were lied to about the mission they were on — all conditions that have contributed to the recent setbacks for Russia’s campaign in the east of Ukraine.

The conversations range from the mundane to the brutal, and include blunt criticisms of Mr. Putin and military commanders, remarks that may be punishable under Russian law if they were publicly expressed at home. The Times is using only the first names of the soldiers, and is withholding the names of family members in order to protect their identities.

Soldiers complain about strategic blunders and a dire shortage of supplies. They confess to capturing and killing non-combatants, and they openly admit to looting Ukrainian homes and businesses. Many say they want to terminate their military contracts, and they rebut the propaganda broadcast by Russian news media back home with the stark realities of the war around them.

Read our full story in the New York Times.

How we reported this story
As part of a monthslong investigation into atrocities committed during Russia’s campaign to seize Kyiv, Yousur Al-Hlou and I exclusively obtained more than 4,000 recordings of Russian soldiers’ phone calls intercepted in the Bucha area by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.

The Times spent almost two months translating the recordings from Russian to English. Twenty-two phones were shared among dozens of soldiers who identified themselves as being members of several military units, including the 656th National Guard Regiment and the 237th and 331st Airborne Regiments. The phones were used to call hundreds of phone numbers in Russia during its campaign in March.

We independently authenticated the calls by cross-referencing outgoing and incoming Russian phone numbers with messaging apps and Russian social media accounts, and information contained in leaked Russian databases. We confirmed the identity of one soldier and his girlfriend over the phone. And details divulged in some calls were verified with contemporaneous reports in Russian media.