I agree I don't think it'd help Putin or anything, I'm just saying that if they took Ukraine, he'd add another 42 million people to the 133 million he already rules over. That's about a third more people to rule over, and he's not concerned about the later years of a peasant Russian. I assume he's concerned with more able bodied young men, which, ironically is a cohort he lacks while he tries to capture the country he's trying to obtain to help with that problem.
Okay I see that majority of comments here on HN including yours have one big flaw. So I'll just try to share perspective as person who was actually born in Russia and lived there good chunk of the year till February 2022.
For some reason people from outside of ex-USSR usually suppose there is at least something rational about this war. But USSR does not exist for 30 years and there are no massive political machine. It's just a autocracy / kleptocracy where all decisions taken by a very small groups of incompetent people whos only goal is to preserve their power.
Neither there is any real ideology in Russia. Putin is a much closer to The Dictator movie than to Stalin or Hitler. He care of his giant palaces and yachts far more than about gaining 42M extra subjects to rule. This whole war is just a presidental PR campaign 2024 gone wrong.
PS: Yeah, that's it. It's not some great powerplay to control the world. Not a war with NATO or US. Not even a war over reasources or territory. It's just aging kleptocracy that stumbled and now is killing 100,000s in pointless war.
I do agree that there is a part of this is a Presidential campaign gone wrong. I don't know if I'd submit that as 100%. But Putin does like looking like a strong man. And if he took Ukraine in a week, as his original plan looked it(?), he would have definitely been able to look like the strong man. I do think there is some aspects of resources and territory though. More access to warm water ports and controlling essentially the bread basket of Europe. Lets not act like Ukraine isn't strategically important for Europe has a whole. Taking Ukraine along with having Belarus in his pocket also significantly shrink the amount of border they actually need to defend because of the mountains.
I not arguing there are no strategic importance. If he'd managed to successfully assasinate or overthrow government in 3 days then it's would be the way how Kremlin will talk of their great victory.
The deal is: neither Putin nor population of Russia give a damn about this territory control. If Ukraine will free Donetsk and Luhansk tomorrow and Crimea in a year no one in Russia will care about it. Except of course people living on occupied territories, but FSB will shut them up.
On 30 September 2022 they announced annexiation of Kherson. Claimed it's will be part of Russia forever. Just a bit more than month later on 9th November 2022 it stopped being part of Russia and no one cared about it since. And too talkative members of occupation government just died under strage circumstances.
Taking 40M people with the same demographic problems gives you a bigger problem - not a solution...