Again, I don’t know if it is true or not but the article came out “Using Mercenaries so it looks like they are losing fewer troops”: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/msn/russia-is-using-mercenaries-to-make-it-look-like-its-losing-fewer-troops-in-syria/ar-BBJ69Kv
They have guards around Putin campaign billboards now, no way is he a popular leader at this time, check the news.
Putin is fighting public opinion to send their boys to die in the Ukraine, but even more so in Syria. It is widely unpopular in Russia.
The Iranian regime has a big public relations problem on its hands as well, due to all the Iranians killed in Syria in recent years. It is a big reason for the demonstrations against the regime that have been occurring this year.
We did the same thing in Iraq. There’s no stats on how many people Blackwater lost, all our published numbers are purely military personnel.