The Russians have a volunteer fighting force in Ukraine and if wasting lives was a reality, there would not be 1.7m Russians under arms 3 years later in the “Western Meatgrinder” when Russia started with 540K around the world. When a million Russias are wading thru Ukraine after the kick off the annual summer offensive season, it appears it is the NATO chain of command that leaves their soldiers surrounded and pounded and never give the order to retreat, or use fire and manuever tactics.
Trading lives for land is the Wester Plan.
The Russians have a volunteer fighting force in Ukraine and if wasting lives was a reality, there would not be 1.7m Russians under arms 3 years later in the “Western Meatgrinder” when Russia started with 540K around the world. The Wall Street Journal had an article last year about the mentality of the families of those fighting and dying for Russia in Ukraine. You can find it
here. A Russian from the hinterlands who fights for a year and is then killed can have his family promised a payment of $150,000. The situation implied in the article, but not explicitly stated, is that the surviving family is actually happy about the outcome. Of course, the families are not going to give a quote to the WSJ saying just that, so one has to infer their motivations. The WSJ calls it the "deathonomics" of the war.