The wife of a Russian soldier who fantasised about mutilating and torturing Ukrainian children to her husband has been unmasked.
Yulia Koptova’s call with her husband Vladimir Kopytov was leaked by Ukrainian secret services.
In it the 30-year-old graphically detailed what she wanted to do Ukrainian children, including carving stars in their back and cutting their genitals off.
What she described was so sickening that even her 31-year-old husband, who's invading Ukraine, was left horrified.
It is believed the woman is a mother and works at a children’s hospital in the Smolensk region of Russia.
When talking about Ukrainian children, she said: “I would inject drugs to them and if it worked, I would look them in the eye and say: 'Die, suffer'.
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“I would cut their [genitals], carve stars on their backs, and even sever parts of their ear every day, their finger, so they would hurt so bad.”
Her husband was left appalled at her sickening outburst and said: “They’re children, Yulia.…”
But she was unrepentant and said: “I just hate these Ukrainians, I hate them.”
The call was made earlier this month when the Russian soldier called home from his position, believed to be somewhere near Kharkiv.
On his social media, Vladimir says that he’s a “real psycho but not immoral”.
Ukrainian journalists from Radio Liberty said that the wife - from the village of Przhevalsky, in Smolensk region - declined to talk.
Her husband objected that their voices had been released, and his mother was asked about her daughter-in-law’s threats.
She said: “What do I have to do with all this? What are you brainwashing me for?
“Did my son say something there? If she said something, then deal with her.”
This comes amid a number of revelations of Russian atrocities during the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The city of Mariupol has been a flashpoint of the war and the scene of some of the worst and most relentless bombings and air attacks.
A theatre doubling up as a shelter for reportedly around 1,000 people was attacked and a maternity hospital was bombed in the city as well.
However, some of the most harrowing scenes from the invasion so far have emerged from Bucha, in the Kyiv Oblast.
In the aftermath of Russia’s retreat from the area around the capital, a number of the towns and urban centres it controlled were freed.
However, in Bucha, videos quickly emerged from Ukrainian soldiers showing the streets littered with dead bodies and shallow graves.
Some of the dead were photographed with their hands still bound when they were killed.
