Russia is starting to face up to the devastating impact on its troops of the war in Ukraine, yet Moscow is still clinging to baseless denials over killing Ukrainian civilians.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, used an interview with Sky News's Mark Austin to acknowledge "significant" losses of Russian forces over the past six weeks.
"It's a huge tragedy for us," he said.
Russia last gave an official figure for what it claimed to be the number of Russian soldiers killed fighting in Ukraine on 25 March, putting the toll at 1,351.
But the true number is thought to be much higher
Ukraine's armed forces say around 18,700 Russian military personnel have been killed so far, though that figure is also not confirmed.
The use of the word "significant" by Mr Peskov to describe the scale of the loss signals perhaps a new willingness to face the reality of the price in blood that the Kremlin - and the country - is paying for invading its neighbour.
But the president's spokesman has not experienced the same kind of enlightenment when it came to the war crimes Mr Putin and his military are accused of committing - backed up by substantial physical evidence and eyewitness accounts - against Ukrainian civilians.
One of the most shocking onslaughts to emerge so far was in the town of Bucha, just outside Kyiv, which came under Russian control for about a month, before the troops retreated.
During that time, Russian soldiers are suspected of torturing and executing people, while Russian bombardments left many more dead.
The bodies of men and women lay untouched in the streets of the town, with family, friends and neighbours too scared to go and retrieve them in case they met the same fate.
Mr Peskov attempted to dismiss the allegations as a "well-staged insinuation" and a "bold fake".
But his denials collapse in the face of the weight of evidence on the ground, including multiple bodies found with hands bound and shot in head or chest as well as multiple accounts from the town's residents of seeing Russian troops killing civilians.
The Kremlin has a long track record of using lies, denials, deflections and distortions to try to create confusion and doubt and mask the reality of whatever hostile activity it has done.
The scale of the carnage in Bucha and across Ukraine, however, is impossible to brush aside with words alone in a television interview.
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