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I think that may be a literary reference.
"How Much Land Does a Man Need?" is an 1886 short story by Leo Tolstoy about a greedy man.
Answer
His servant buries him in an ordinary grave only six feet long, thus answering the question posed in the title of the story.
Break up Russia.
A million soldiers on Russian side and many hundreds of thousands on ukrainian side.
At least Ukraine is fighting for something real. They are literally protecting Europe by not giving up and continuing to fight.
Russian soldiers, what did they die for? Absolutely nothing.
At least 3 years ago their families had a chance to get a new Lada when they die. Now I would be surprised if they got anything more than a sack of potatoes.
They get literal meat grinders and some flowers.
That feels a little on the nose...
Still better than the peeps on government assistance getting Cheetos.
He said, addressing Russian leaders: “Don’t you have enough land? Eleven time zones and still not enough? Take care of better governing what is within your borders according to international law.”
I understand the sentiment, but I don't like the pointless polemic. I mean, he's the foreign minister, he very well knows that this stopped being a landgrab the moment the war wasn't over within a week...
What is it if not a landgrab? A pit Putin can throw the next generation of russians into? A blow to Putin's pride that he refuses to accept?
In a large part, a distraction. Or more generally, a way to stay in power. How do you stay in power when your country is doing very poorly economically while you and your friends keep siphoning public money into their pockets? You create a strong narrative, ideally an external enemy ("NATO wants to destroy our way of life!" "Ukraine is full of fascists killing Russians!"). Support it by propaganda from your state-controlled media and you are a hero saving the country, if not the world. You can do pretty much anything and still retain considerable support.
That's also why Putin can't really afford peace, he would lose a strong narrative in his favour. He pretends to agree, but doesn't actually follow conditions of any agreement while constantly increasing his demands. He might agree with an agreement that would basically be Ukraine's capitulation, but nothing less.
He didn't want NATO to be next to Russia, so he decided to try and take a country to be closer to NATO.
Smort man
What is it if not a landgrab? A pit Putin can throw the next generation of russians into? A blow to Putin’s pride that he refuses to accept?
A hot potatoe that an autocratic regime living on borrowed time has to keep juggling out of self-preservation.
You're styling it as "blow to pride", but I'm quite certain that if that catastrophic drain on Russian resources and lives just... ended tomorrow without any tangible strategic gains (like a sustained destabilization of NATO) then people would literally start dying. Not the poor expendable footsoldiers, but people in charge. Can't have that, so gotta keep expending that infantry.