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From the character assessments I’ve read, I agree that it’s unlikely he wants to kamikaze himself or his family. However on the children point I would be careful not to over-index on that.
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Putin is not “normal”. It’s very conceivable that he likes his children, but likes not losing control even more. If Putin loses the war badly and subsequently gets ousted, likelihood of death/imprisonment for him and his family is high. Hitler probably liked his wife, kids and dog, but when it came to the end game we all know how that went. I expect many such examples exist with similar characters driven by control-fetish, such as serial killers and the like.
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Putting family members in office isn’t necessarily an indication of deep care or love. Trust is rare and valuable for Putin, and blood relatives come with instant trust points.
Upvoted because I think it’s a relevant consideration, just not enough to conclude much by itself.
We’re still only a few hours post the bridge attack, but worth noting that when given the opportunity to massively escalate with a ‘red line’ being crossed, the Russian government are talking about how this was a terrorist attack and traffic will be up and running within hours (playing down the impact). This suggests to me they’re extremely unwilling to move up to tactical nuclear weapons right now.