Putin has 900,000 fewer troops this week

Every morning at 3 a.m., an email from the Kyiv Independent pops into my inbox, bringing the news of yesterday's savage attacks on Ukraian's homes and power plants, along with a running total of Russia's troop losses in the three-plus years since Putin's full-scale invasion of the country. That figure today stands at 902,010 men killed, captured, deserted, and hospitalized. Yesterday's toll was 1,210. These figures are improbably precise, to be sure, and no doubt some of the wounded will return to the front lines. But Ukraine's figures have generally been confirmed by other countries' estimates of Russian losses.

Indeed, the British Ministry of Defence suggests that Russian casualties have not only topped 900,000, but "up to 250,000" troops have been killed in action. (That's nearly five times American losses in the Vietnam war, in one-third the time.) And the Russian anti-war website Mediazona has compiled the names and home addresses of 97,994 Russians known to have died in Ukraine, mostly from social media postings. It's a brave Russian family that would puncture the veil of secrecy imposed by Putin's dictatorship, so that figure is certainly much higher.