Russian invasion of Ukraine

Russian army casualties are irrelevant, as they always have been in Russian wars - on the basis that there won’t be any Russian public backlash.

I think their experience in Afghanistan would disagree. However, what some commentators miss when they reference Afghanistan, is the backlash was only possible because of Glasnost. Putin is cutting off all access to non-state information. I heard someone recently make the point that once visa and mastercard go then a lot of VPN users will loose their access - although these are a tiny fraction of the population anyway.