Putin wants to control Ukraine. At any cost. He wants Stalin’s empire back.

Yup, that’s what the media have told me unceasingly. It’s bullshit, and anyway the USSR wasn’t an “empire.”

They throw ridiculous numbers of soldiers at pointless human wave assaults just to gain a couple of meters ground.

No, they don’t. You’re just parroting the “meat wave” propaganda that’s been blasted at us for the last 3½ years. And it’s a canard that goes back at least as far as WWII Nazi war propaganda. It’s as real as the Ghost of Kyiv.