One - Russian elite is billionaires and 9-figure millionaires. They don’t want themselves and their whole families to die. They have pretty nice lives.
Two - If you give in to nuclear blackmail then taken to its logical conclusion it will never end. You have to make sure Russians win at everything they attempt because otherwise “NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION!”
The world is infatuated with the idea of defending Ukraine in a proxy war with Russia, and is pretending that success is defined as destroying Putin's conventional forces and munitions.
I submit that we should do everything possible to stop the war before it gets to that point.
I am NOT proposing caving to nuclear blackmail, nor naive enough to suppose the Russian elites (who have been dying quite frequently lately) have any influence over Putin's use of nukes.
Suggesting that Ukraine is a democracy worth defending, ignores their outlawing of the opposition party and media.