Nearly half a million Russians killed in war in Ukraine - GCHQ
According to new estimates by Anne Keast-Butler, head of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), nearly half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, The Guardian reports.
Keast-Butler, head of GCHQ—the electronic intelligence agency—stated in her first speech in this role that there is "new intelligence suggesting that nearly half a million Russian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the conflict." An exact figure was not specified, though the estimate is believed to be close to this total.
She provided the new assessment of Russian military fatalities, which is higher than the recent estimate of 352,000 calculated by the emigrant media outlets Meduza and Mediazona, which extrapolated the figure based on official data regarding the issuance of death certificates.
She also noted that Russian troops are "retreating on the battlefield" in Ukraine for the first time since late 2022.
