I live in Lithuania, and speak with people in Ukraine each week. Much of what CNN and MSNBC or BBCC report is lies. The reason Putin lost over 750,000 is because he is using the Same Stalin tactic as his mentor Joe Stalin. toss many troops in headlong attacks and follow up with tanks and armillary. UKR having a smaller army generally pull back from such tactics. and dumb reporters see this as retreat. While thy are pulling back. Their Drone army hundreds of Km in the rear echelon launch attacks on all those RU tanks and APCs and Artilleries. Try watching some footage from a site called ANKAR on You Tube. CNN and old broads like Amanpour are not really there to see it happen. As to just dropping their guns. Many Russians do that daily. just two weeks ago the 40K Ru troops isolated in Crimea had 10K desert since they ran out of ammo food and fuel.
UKR has a program ["I want to Live"] where they fly drones over Russian battlefields and tell the Russians if they surrender they will get Food, a warm bed and medical attention [ all things the Russian army sparsely supplies. Over 50,000 Russians have deserted and another 15000 have come over to fight with Ukraine. Some have actually joined in helping URK fight because they have been so badly treated as soldiers in Putin's army. If they came via the "I want to Live" UKR plan, they send messages back to their buddies that upon surrender, they were given food, took warm showers, and are now housed in barracks with beds and all amenities. during exchanges of POW's many do not want to go back to RU.
On the other side, there are many stories of how the Russians torture, beat and starve Ukrainian POW.s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGKcjUpHyik&ab_channel=BBCNews
