To distract people from the reality that the ruling class is ramping up their efforts to gain authoritarian control in a significantly large number of countries lately.
It's for conquering Crime a and parts od Ukraine. And as long as they get to keep the land, Putin will be satisfied... and the average russian will trust the propaganda they should be satisfied as well.
That‘s more than Napoleon lost in Russia in one of history‘s most remarkable military blunders. So the Russians can‘t even look back at that fondly anymore. It‘s truly insane.
And a recent report identified 60.000 Russian soldiers that had been killed. If the number of identifiable bodies alone is that high, the Ukrainian numbers are most likely credible.
Remember as well that modern small arms rounds are built to inflict serious injury if they don't kill you outright - it takes more personnel to evac and care for a wounded soldier (unless you're doing what Russia is ALLEGEDLY doing and just killing soldiers too injured to fight).
UK intelligence has been more conservative in their figures but not by a significant amount. They often report a milestone within days or a fortnight of Ukraine.
I do love that they all claim to hate Putin and the Russian state but only accept sources that paint it in a good light. The AP is apparently biased to them but substacks and Sputnik News are all legit.
It's about understanding the bias; if a US news source admits to something that reflects negatively on the US, we can assume it's at least that bad. Same with a Russian source about Russia.
When an American source runs a story that makes Russia look bad, it's not very credible. Same with Russian sources on America.
In both cases, the actual narrative the article uses its facts to paint should typically be disregarded; the atomic unit of propaganda being emphasis and all.
If they were evenly distributed.
Huge chunk of the soldiers are men from remote villages lured with a huge payout in comparison to local wages, and who lack the information to figure out the truth about the real casualties as they aren't spoken about in the Russian media.
We live in a world where propaganda is everywhere. What does it matter who has the most victims if the sources are manipulated by both sides? The Nazis were broadcasting proclamations of victory by radio thanks to new secret weapons ready to annihilate the enemies... while the Russians were at the gates of Berlin.
There is propaganda in peacetime, let alone in wartime. Does anyone remember Iraq's overwhelming evidence that it had weapons of mass destruction? Well, 10 years later it officially turned out that it was all a hoax to convince the US government and allies to unleash the war against Saddam and seize the oil wells. The counting of the dead only serves to make people of different factions clash and divert from the daily problems of all of us, problems that governments do not solve, instead throwing mountains of money into weapons (money to the weapon producers=money from the weapon lobby for the electoral campaigns)