Putler also will be nervous about having a hungry demoralized army milling about the North Nigerian countryside
According to the Russian opposition website Meduza:
"The Russian government paid soldiers and their families between 2.75 trillion and 3 trillion rubles ($31 billion-$33.9 billion) in salaries and compensation payments between July 2023 and June 2024, according to a new estimate by the policy group Re:Russia.
This is equivalent to 1.4-1.6 percent of the country's expected GDP in 2024, as well as to 7.5-8.2 percent of its federal budget expenditures for this year and 3.4-3.7 percent of all consumer spending in 2023."Why the hell would we want to keep doing this for even one second longer than it was necessary?
8% of all federal budget expenditures is a huge number to be spending on salaries alone.
The people on contract in Ukraine right now, cannot legally be released from military service until the end of the Special Military Operation. They get occasional rotations to the rear for rest (unlike UA soldiers), but they can't simply quit either.
I suspect the overwhelming majority are counting the seconds and the minutes until this war ends - just like the Russian Minister of Finance.
We'll have to spend money for decades more on the various subsidies Putin promised them and their families (subsidised mortgages, free tuition, subsidized healthcare, etc), but that's peanuts compared to the almost $40B a year we're spending right now - which is a ton of money.
So I think that Putin will actually be very happy to send them home, and so will they.
P.S. Far from being a threat to Putin, these guys are going to be Putin's enforcers. He already promised them priority treatment for all government positions. Now, if you had never served, you simply can't be a contender many Russian government positions.
Also, why would they be antagonistic towards Putin when he's stuffing them full of treats, which are many multiples of what an average Russian makes?