This is the Fr. V. Debating Society.

I am Gaias, John Bachelor.

Germanicus, Mark of Laos, is here.

By the Thames, it is late summer, 91 AD.

The Empire that we live in is at peace.

We are surrounded by centurions in their families shopping nicely.

Londonium is not threatened by anyone that we can imagine at this point.

The Empire is troubled way far from us in the Asian frontier.

The Emperor is disappointing, but nonetheless, we know that our future is secure here.

There won't be trouble in Londonium for another two centuries.

So we look for trouble in the 21st century.

And Germanicus and I, for our months now, have been looking for an explanation for how

Ukraine is fighting the war, the counteroffensive.

What explains it?

The results now are extremely stark and disappointing.

This is the New York Times reporting in these last days.

The total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine

began 18 months ago.

It's nearing 500,000, according to US officials, to the New York Times.

A staggering toll, the New York Times writes, as Russia assaults its next-door neighbor.

The official figures, the official's caution that casually figures remain difficult to

estimate because Moscow's believed to routinely undercount its war, dead, and injured.

...