These are new recruits, not fully trained drone operators.

It's still dumb to send the young, the future of the military and the country to the front line to be slaughtered though.

After years of brainless meat wave tactics and Putin's transformation of the economy into a wartime one, I've seen Russia's side of the conflict not as a conventional war, but as an economic scheme. Winning in Ukraine would only force them to redirect this economic machine elsewhere, probably towards the Baltic states.

As long as the war grinds on in this way, the tame oligarchs can keep getting richer. Peace would break the Russian economy. Their workforce is hollowed out, their demographic makeup is in full collapse. They'll be lucky if China turns them into a client state before it all happens.