In the Russian army, the officers are generally behind the soldiers pushing them forward, backed by hit squads who shoot deserters or those who refuse to attack. These troops, many using drugs and alcohol, are also very badly led – or rather, pushed.

Hence, they appear only to be able to man trenches, or go over the top WW1 style, where they are decimated by better trained and disciplined Ukrainian troops. With part-trained manpower it is evident that Russian forces cannot conduct combined arms warfare, where infantry are protected by tanks, artillery and fighter jets. The first is that the elites of the Russian army were killed or injured in the first few months of the war and replaced by conscripts with little or no training. There are several reasons why these rates are so high, and why the Russian public seems to be ambivalent about the carnage being inflicted on their sons. His “special military operation” was supposed to be a near bloodless – on the Russian side, at least – coup over in a matter of days. It’s little wonder Putin’s regime wants to hide the true numbers from the Russian people. These are the sort of casualty rates we associate with the First World War, and completely unprecedented in modern times. In addition to these losses, there are another 80,000 or so very seriously wounded, incapable of further fighting. Reporting from independent media outlets suggests that somewhere between 40,000 and 55,000 Russian men have died on the frontlines, before the start of the current counteroffensive. Everything – from Putin’s meatgrinder tactics to the drone-derived pinpoint accuracy of Ukrainian ordnance - suggested as much. Moscow’s claimed losses of a few thousand were always blatant propaganda. In May, I warned that Russia’s losses were far higher than we had been led to believe.

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