MARIUPOL, Ukraine - According to Svetlana Shevchenko of the Save Ukraine Network, some intercepted Russian army communications, which are often sent out unencrypted, have claimed there is a commonly cited figure for the percentage of civilians who must perish in a given oblast (roughly equivalent to a county) in Ukraine, before Russian political control can be affirmed. It's 5%.
Says Shevchenko, "We kept hearing this number repeated throughout Russia's invading forces, including from brigade commanders, conscripts, and even Colonels and Senior Lietenants. We used sites like https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t39toj/you_can_listen_to_russian_troops_talking_to/ to listen to their exchanges.
Sometimes they communicate through Armed Forces radio, sometimes through cell phones, but to a surprisingly large degree their communications are not encrypted." The claim has been echoed by journalists from Ukrayinska Pravda and the New Voice of Ukraine.
They would say "Remember 5%". Eventually, through dozens of intercepted calls, we found what they mean. In Mariupol, a city of over 400,000, the invaders had to eliminate 20,000 before military control of the city was assured. This figure is not disputed by either Russian or Ukrainian authorities."
So apparently a general belief among the Russian armed forces is that 5% of a city or oblast's civilians must die, before military
control by Russia can be consistently maintained.
"It turns out that "5 percent" sounds almost the same in Russian and Ukrainian" says Save Ukraine's Oleg Kravchuk, "so even Ukrainian civilians and military personnel who do not speak Russian are familiar with this concept."
