Nearly half a million Russians killed in Ukraine war, UK spy chief says

Anne Keast-Butler says Russian forces are ‘going backwards on the battlefield’ for first time since late 2022Nearly half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion more than four years ago, according to a new estimate from the head of the British spy agency GCHQ. Anne Keast-Butler, the chief of the electronic intelligence agency, said in her first speech in the job that Russian forces were “going backwards on the battlefield” inside Ukrain