Do they care when they talk of making populace "eat grass?" And I think they wouldn't even mind doing that and losing for as long as they "mess up your lawn"

From tiny pieces of what gets leaked, Putin hoped for nothing less than complete victory in both Georgia and Ukraine, and in both times it demonstrated that his generals were comically incompetent, causing lots of discontent in the military. Nevertheless, I think he still came out quite happy with just scaring the West away from those two countries, and messing up any prospect for a brighter future for them.