About 10 days before the Ukrainian army retook the town of Izium in the Kharkiv region on September 9, Russian soldiers wrote at least 10 letters to their superiors, asking to be relieved of active duty due to “moral exhaustion”, “deterioration” of health. and lack of vacation time to see their families. “I refuse to complete my duty in the special operation on the territory of Ukraine due to lack of vacation days and moral exhaustion,” wrote a person identifying himself as a commander, in a letter obtained by the Washington Post. The 10 letters, dated August 30, were among several belongings left behind in Izium as the Russian military made a hasty retreat from the area after months of occupation. Ukrainian soldiers provided original copies of the letters to The Post, which reported on the correspondence. Some of them were also posted on Twitter. The Post, however, made it clear that the authenticity of the letters has not been confirmed by independent medical examiners. — andrii bashtovyi (@nomoreanry) September 12, 2022 One soldier wrote that he hoped to be relieved of his duties because of “the deterioration of my health and the failure to receive the necessary medical assistance.” Another wrote that he was experiencing “physical and moral exhaustion,” The Post reported. Other letters revealed that Russian soldiers did not take vacation time and missed important family events such as weddings or seeing the birth of a child. The 10 letters appeared to be written similarly, The Post reported, suggesting they were written together. The content of the letters also shares some of the weary sentiments other Russian soldiers have expressed in recent days as Ukrainian forces reclaim thousands of square miles of land. In a call intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence services, a Russian soldier told his father: “Everything is bad, pop… We are losing, for sure, over this.” The extent of the losses in the Kharkiv region is slowly becoming clearer. On Thursday, a mass grave with at least 440 bodies was found in Izium, according to a tweet by Iuliia Mendel, the former spokesman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and other journalists. — Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) September 15, 2022