He has been trapped in the propaganda bubble and has become delusional as a result of it.
Russia applied the human wave attack tactics in WWII as well, and that war remains their benchmark standard.
Even though the Russians know that the elections are rigged, they desperately want to keep up the appearance that their country is the best and most democratic, and not at all an evil empire ruled by a crazy dictator. That is why they care so much about keeping up the election show.
Also, the dominant mafia group that runs Russia uses elections to prove to other competing mafia groups that they are still the strongest, able to manipulate millions of people without any protest.
Russia does run out of tanks, gradually. That's why it has started to use obsolete Soviet-era tanks. The day when Russia completely runs out of tanks isn't anytime soon, since Russia has thousands of obsolete tanks in storage.
Still, the number of tanks Russia has diminishes every day, and their quality is worsening. In the meantime, Ukraine gets new rather modern vehicles from the West and captures a lot of Russian ones. Having an advantage, Ukraine is going to destroy even more Ruscist tanks - and thus move closer to the distant victory.
Why do you think they are all the same people? In reality, new recruits are conscripted every month. I have seen them myself.
Moreover, there's a regular rotation of units between the frontline and the rear, with a few days off to meet the family.
They have increased arms spending several times, as soon as they understood what the 2014 annexation of Crimea portends to them: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-19/baltics-states-have-doubled-arms-spending-since-putin-s-advance Now they prudently give a lot of arms to Ukraine, to prevent any possibility of Ruscist success.
It reminds me of the Ottoman empire which was deeply sick and murderous before its final demise.
At the breakup of every empire, many people were afraid of what would happen. But nowadays numerous free nations that were once a part of this or that empire, celebrate their independent development. I think the same will happen with the forthcoming free nations which are still Russian colonies.
That's due to decades of totalitarian terror which conditioned the populace to obey blindly. TBH, having grown up under Communist regime, I still sometimes notice in myself the remnants of deep fear of the state. This is a multi-generational trauma. Fortunately here in Ukraine we also have ancient democratic traditions.
Yes, "to put paid to (something)" is a rather rare British English idiom, and I also had to look it up. Basically, it means "to stop something from happening or spoil plans for something".