Does Putin actually want to kill off a bunch of young Russian men?

[gulliver]

A lot has been made of the fact that Putin seems to "not care" that he's causing the deaths of a lot of young Russian men. But, as with a lot of cases where someone appears to "not care" about something, the next question becomes, "do they actually want what they supposedly don't care about?"

Is culling potentially politically troublesome, perhaps disaffected Russian young men from the Russian population part of Putin's motivation? Is he, in fact, glad that potentially politically troublesome young men are leaving Russia, either to other countries or the afterlife?

[Disaffected]

1. I don't know about that but

he might find getting rid of convicts to be a side benefit.

[Ilsa]

9. How many are political prisoners because

they were arrested for protesting, etc? Yeah, I guess that benefits him personally/ politically.

[cilla4progress]

2. At the beginning, I read that

he was selecting ethnic minorities to fight.

[peggysue2]

3. I've read that theory

That Putin's cavalier attitude in throwing an endless stream of young men into a meat grinder is purposeful, a way of culling the herd down to a more easily managed population, a populace with less ethnic and political dissimilarities.

I tend to think vanity has more a sway and the need to remain the 'strongman,' the man with the Iron Fist. How can he give up on Ukraine after continuously defining the country and her people as nonexistent, a weak collection of rabble-rousers, Nazis, incompetents, Satanists?

How can he give up on Ukraine and remain in power?

Putin painted himself into a box through bad intel and wishful thinking--a 3-day walk in the park, a military exercise resulting in Ukrainians throwing flowers at his feet.

The war was a miscalculation on a gazillion levels.

[Arthur_Frain]

4. Wait, Putin is Thanos?

[Fiendish Thingy]

5. He's not killing just young Russian men

A lot of the young ones fled the country, so he’s had to draft a lot of older guys (40’s and 50’s) too.

[mucifer]

6. Lots of young professionals have left the country. That cannot be good for russia

[Ilsa]

10. Putin wants to be left with the uneducated.

He believes it worked well for his asset, Trump.

[Zeitghost]

7. No

Russia (and Ukraine and most of the Eastern Orthodox world) are on the brink of a population collapse, and immigrant communities aren't exactly flooding into Russia.

[GoCubsGo]

8. No. He would prefer to have use those "troublesome young men" as cannon fodder,

along with everyone else. And, IIRC, he closed the borders to prevent more of them from leaving, and he has managed to conscript a whole bunch of them before they were able to escape. The fact of the matter is that he really doesn't care. All one has to do is look at the way he treats his own casualties. He leaves them on the battlefield to rot, rather than sending them home for burial. I have heard from people who know a lot more about Russia and Russians than I do that this is a cultural thing, rather than just a Putin thing. I vaguely remember the whole "cannon fodder/abandon the dead" thing when they were in Afghanistan, as well. It seems their strategy is to just keep throwing bodies at it until you get what you want, and who cares what happens to the ones who don't make it.

[Mr. Ected]

11. My sons make music and purchase beats from a kid in Russia

He's 18 and just told them that he's being conscripted to join the army there. He's scared half to death. As much as we want Russia to lose this war, the sad truth is that a lot of these sacrificial lambs are only kids themselves and not politically motivated in the least.

[Igel]

12. Putin's a true believer.

There is a Cause.

Individuals and their concerns and needs (for example, life) are trivial compared to the Cause. Their sacrifice will be rewarded by history.

[dembotoz]

13. Russia lost a whole lot of men in ww2 and uncle joe

Not that russian moms do not love there kids less

but war death is not a new thing to them