THE BUTCHER’S BILL: In her first public speech, delivered May 27 at Bletchley Park, GCHQ's new director Anne Keast-Butler assigned a number to Russia's war dead: nearly 500,000 of its soldiers killed since 2022. That figure is hard to confirm but BBC News says their organization has verified more than 223,000 names. Given that both sides closely guard their own casualty counts there are undoubtedly many more, perhaps as many as GCHQ cites.