So - systems check time.
Made yourself a global pariah
Destroyed your primary export market.
Pissed away your Soviet stockpile inheritance
Blew your 30 year war chest of blood oil/gas, leaving your future extraction reserves of only the harder, more expensive to get variety.
Made yourself the permanent junior vassal to China, to whom you can now never refuse any demand for resources or concessions.
Destroyed any wisp of diplomatic credibility you’d had since even Stalinist times.
Pissed away your irreplaceable war stockpiles of missiles, attack helicopters, advanced fighter bombers and AWACS planes. Oh, and - the entire Black Sea Fleet. And the use of the Sevastopol Harbor that hosted it.
And - 575,000 working and breeding age males. So far. For a country with brutal demographics way below replacement rates.
And for what? To be within visual range of territory you already controlled for a decade. Put this in perspective - so far in 2024, Russia have lost 180,000 casualties and masses of antiquated equipment, and taken the net sum of territory equivalent to the size of New York City.
And that’s to say NOTHING about what it would take to actually hold that ground long term with occupation forces and settlers despite a permanent insurrection of drones, snipers, IEDs, sabotage, assassinations, car bombs and other goodies that would keep your army bleeding indefinitely and make the American experience in Iraq seem like child’s play.
This has all been a GREAT idea.