Russia has lost 500,000 soldiers since it began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the UK’s intelligence chief said in London. GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler gave the latest figure for Russian casualties in Ukraine during her first public speech at Bletchley Park, saying it proved Vladimir Putin was “going backwards in the battlefield”. Ms Keast-Butler warned Russia was risking a wider conflict in Europe by targeting critical infrastructure and supply chains across the continent. She also said Russian security services were behind espionage plots in multiple countries and blamed Moscow for “scaling up its daily hybrid activity against the UK and Europe”. Assessments by Western intelligence and independent analysts suggest both Russia and Ukraine have seen hundreds of thousands of troops killed in the war, with Moscow’s losses likely significantly higher than Kyiv’s. Neither side publishes regular figures on its own casualties, and both accuse each other of exaggerating their enemy’s losses.…