Vladimir Putin appeared flushed and merry after flying nine time zones east of Moscow before telling young Russians : “You have to live for something to die for.”
An estimated 75,000 of his people have died or been maimed in his war in Ukraine although the numbers are not discussed publicly in Russia.
His rambling speech in Kamchatka - a glaciers-and-volcanoes peninsula in the Pacific - appeared to bemuse his audience of young ecologists.
He boasted that his cast empire in the real Land of the Rising Sun.
Slouching in his chair, he said croakily: “Our neighbour Japan is called the Country of the Rising Sun.
“But further east from Japan is Kamchatka, or Sakhalin [Russia’s largest island].
“Even further east is New Zealand. And further east from New Zealand is Chukotka [a Russian province almost touching Alaska].
“And then there is only a 60-kilometre-wide [37 mile] strait to America.
"In this sense the Country of the Rising Sun is Russia.”
He also told the audience in the regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky: “There is an expression, and whoever told me about it, I promised I would reproduce it out loud in public sometime.
“You have to live for something to die for.
“As strange as it may seem in your humanitarian field, this is something worth living for.”
During a rare eastern trip he will also oversee the culmination of the week-long Vostok-2022 military drills with a visit to Russia’s eastern capital Vladivostok.
Last week, appearing again in front of a crowd of bemused young people, Putin's legs twitched uncontrollably as he chuckled and cracked a weird joke about a "rubber bum".
The Russian President was visiting a group of pre-selected high-IQ students in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad after they spent two weeks in isolation when Covid-19 returned to the area.
Mumbling as he addressed them, his legs can be seen spasming throughout the rare public appearance.
Putin has been accused of trying to brainwash the youths with his alternative view of Russian history, while suggesting Ukraine - where he has caused the mass slaughter of thousands - should be a united territory under Moscow's control.
As the war shows no signs of abating, but Russia continues to lose manpower, Russian President Vladimir Putin is scrambling to replace the dead troops with fresh power for its army.
He has already raised the minimum age for recruits and turned to Russia's prison population in a bid to mobilise troops.
Now, the Nochlezhka charity has said, officials are targetting its homeless shelters in a central district of St Petersburg on the Baltic sea.
An unnamed source from charity Nochlezhka told the Rotunda news service: “[A recruiter] offered to hand out leaflets explaining that men were to be called to serve under contracts.
"The duty officer [at the shelter] did not allow the leaflets to be handed out.”
Rotunda said that officials at the city administration had confirmed that a recruiter had been trying to enlist from the city’s homeless population.
Charity spokeswoman Tatyana Bazhenova said that Nochlezhka will not help Putin's recruiters bolster their ranks with people from her shelters, she told the Bumaga news channel.
