As you read reports about the United States potentially increasing arms deliveries to Ukraine, keep this in mind: This war is already more than the Kremlin bargained for. And if average Russians see it get any worse, President Vladimir Putin will likely find his sudden surge in post-Crimea popularity evaporating. So the West's impulse to shorten this war through escalation—or by at least by helping yank the Ukrainian military into the 21st century—is almost certainly the right one. As the number of dead Russian soldiers begins climbing, outraged Russian citizens could well be the ones to end Putin's incursion.

Anyone following non-Kremlin media realizes full well that Moscow doesn’t want to acknowledge Russian troops’ deaths. The Kremlin doesn’t want you, or Kiev, or the Russians back home to know that its soldiers leading and aiding pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine are dying by the dozens, casualties in generic insignias and unmarked graves.

The lengths to which the Kremlin has gone to obscure those casualties are typical of its broader modus operandi, both historically and tactically. The Kremlin attempted this play in Afghanistan in the 1980s, eliding the fact that Soviet forces saw myriad casualties during invasion, and in the First Chechen War, combining abject denials of Russian presence from above with concerted muffling from below. The redirection—the silencing—also fits with Moscow’s current information policy. The Kremlin tells its populace, its media, and its lawmakers: Don’t dig. Toe the official line. Smother the truth, depriving these dead soldiers of dignity. Because, claims the Kremlin, these men are not in fact obeying orders. Rather (goes the lie) these are “volunteers," coursing with Russian messianism, eager to put their lives on the line against the fascism brewing next door. No one has ordered their presence in eastern Ukraine. They’ve arrived under their own volition, for god and country.

As the Kremlin disavows the dead, it's impossible to know how many Russian troops have died during this invasion. The state has stonewalled and shunned families of the deceased. Unidentified goons bludgeoned and hospitalized inquisitive lawmakers. Authorities jailed a 73-year-old diabetic, leading Russia’s innocuous Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, simply for publicizing the deaths of those fighting on Russia’s behalf. Media immunity is no pass. When BBC journalists traveled to southern Russia to interview a family of one of the forgotten, three toughs smashed their camera, deleted their footage, and beat their cameraman.

The Kremlin isn’t obfuscating the dozens or hundreds dead out of some sense of wayward tradition; rather, it’s hoping to obscure its casualties because, like the rest of us, the Kremlin can read polls. There, the sentiment’s clear: The broader Russian public may have backed the Crimean annexation, and they may see the current Ukrainian government as a Western puppet, but they’ll be damned if they'll sacrifice their family to prop up the latest Russian invasion. One recent poll from the Levada Center found only 13 percent of Russians willing to send sons to fight in eastern Ukraine.