How many generals does Russia have left?

From what I understand from Devereaux articles on modern armies, I would expect modern armies to have a lot of lower ranks officers but actually not that many generals, given the emphasis on local, low level adaptation and décision. https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/

spies are probably easier to place and activate than in the 1960s

If by spies you mean intelligence officers, they are not. Facial recognition and simple internet checkups make passable fake identities pretty much impossible to do well. People generate too much data about themselves in 2022 to be "engineered" without herculean effort. When intelligence officers have to travel to a foreign country, nowadays they need to do so by using their actual identity and fitting an extensive cover story into that. If you posted something like "man I can't wait to join the CIA" on your facebook page when you were 16 then you're probably out of luck. More than one SOF/CIA officer has been stopped at customs after a long planning period because their hometown newspaper quoted them as wanting to be a SEAL when they grew up.

It is true that spies (as in the people being blackmailed) can send information more conveniently nowadays due to the internet, but it's still risky for them to do so. They can't use traditional tradecraft like TAILS because just using things like that is too suspicious. So the CIA or whatever intelligence agency has to make some innocuous purpose-built websites for infodumps and hope that either no one is monitoring this high level government employee's cell phone or they aren't looking closely.

Are there any contrarian 4-star generals?

Generals probably have choice about where in the battlefield they are. If they are getting shot by snipers and artillery then that is probably their decision to get so close to the front.