Cannon fodder.

Send in your obsolete material, get your enemy to expose himself by sacrificing your conscripts and get your enemy to expend his ammunition.

Of course, a profound underestimation is the number of anti-tank weaponry increasingly available to the Ukrainians.

However, the latest anti-missile weaponry, attached to Russian 'cruise missiles', may perhaps tell a different story about Russian obsolescence. They did after all hit that base close to the Polish border with pinpoint accuracy.

And asking China for financial help and food for Russia's troops, combined with recruiting Syrian street fighters, are distractions right out of Sun Tzu.

Appear weak where you are strong.

Arab mercenaries, fighting in a country where they do not know the language, and will stick out like a sore thumb, is not a good strategy, unless like the Russian conscripts, they are cannon fodder.

This proxy war will hurt all pawns be they Russian or Ukrainian...and God help us when, and not if, it breaks out into open worldwide conflict.

Regime change is the only way out of this and it must come from the Russian military: only problem is that their battlefield officers have become sniper bait.