Although they did not agree with Nicholas I's approach, they shared the same goal as he did: to reclaim Constantinople.
In these people's judgment, whether Russia continued pouring troops into the Balkans or tried to ease relations with the region's various ethnic groups through conciliation and other means, neither served Russia's interests at this time.
Likewise, joining forces with the Austrian Empire to attack the Ottoman Empire was not a good option. Yet among all these less-than-ideal choices, staking everything on seizing Constantinople was Russia's most correct path.
To them, Russia at this moment was like the spaghetti code of later generations. Making random changes would not save Russia; it would only plunge it into a place of eternal damnation.
By comparison, taking Constantinople was an opportunity—an opportunity to raise Russian morale and make domestic contradictions vanish without a trace.
Or rather, like Nicholas I, they believed that as long as Constantinople was taken, every one of Russia's problems would be solved as easily as splitting bamboo.
As for Nicholas I and the War Department's current plan, it was entirely useless work. In their view, the most important thing now was to force the Austrians into the war. Russia could not possibly fight two enemies alone, much less allow the Austrians to develop in its rear.
What remained was to divide and dismantle the Ottoman Empire's potential allies, chiefly the British and the French. In their eyes, no country besides Britain and France posed any threat to Russia, so none of the others mattered.
These people had their own ideas, but lacked real power. Moreover, they had only ideas for the moment and did not know how to put them into practice; at the very least, no unified opinion had formed within their ranks.
But their enemies were not the