in particular, dead soldiers; for those who, like me, have been puzzled by the discrepancies in the death toll of Russian soldiers advanced by the two sides :

The unwanted dead

Russia's defence ministry last week announced an official death toll of 1,351 for the first month of what Moscow has insisted on calling a "special military operation" in Ukraine, but Kyiv says the real total is more than 16,000. Nato last week estimated the Russian death toll to be between 7,000 and 15,000. Ukraine has not released figures about its own casualties.

[...]

Vereshchuk said Ukraine had the bodies of at least 2,000 Russian soldiers in refrigerated storage in different regions across the country, as well as other cases where there were some charred remains or simply a identification token with a name, but that the Russians were not interested.

"We are counting them all. We have the remains in fridges. We say to them, take them, they are in body bags, we can give them to the Red Cross, send them to the Belarusian border, to wherever you want, we'll give you these bodies," said Vereshchuk.

She added this would require Russia to send lists of the missing via the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which Ukraine would then compare with the bodies it had and could return those that matched. The Russian authorities, she said, did not want to send lists because that would involve admitting how many soldiers have been killed.

I suppose "MIA" or "AWOL" is convenient in the short term... but Russia will need a plan B for this too.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}