[yucky]

No, the most obvious answer is that they went there to destroy high value targets to weaken Ukraine militarily, making it far easier to do what they want to do in the Donbass/Crimean land bridge area. Now rather than having to deal with the Ukrainian air force, tank units, air defense etc. those obstacles are mostly gone.

[mcphage]

That's not really a great read on the situation, at least according to military historians: https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1508947030273671177

In another thread, he describes it as:

> So to put it bluntly, if the 'clever plan' was to lose 10,000 KIA to set conditions to walk away with the Donbas, that's a stupid plan. That's winning the negotiation on a $15k car by cleverly offering an opening bid of $55k and throwing in your old car as a sweetener.

[yucky]

The Donbas isn't really the main target for Russia, since that is already essentially ruled by separatist pro-Russian forces for years. The prize is the area west of there and to the south, connecting Crimea by land and freeing up the water resources that have been blocked.

Admittedly I'm not a historian like the Twitter guy with the bad analogies, but I suspect the furthest west that Russia seeks to control is Kherson (not Odessa), then following the water going back NE of there to Zaporizhzhia & then all the way up towards Kharkiv in some fashion. This gives Russia a ton of natural[1] and industrial resources, plus significantly weakens Ukraine, without having to try and occupy the more populated and less Russian areas west of there towards Kyiv and further. Putin will likely try to sell this as necessary to provide a buffer zone for the heavily Russian Donbas region from Ukrainian shelling.

That being said, I'm just some turd on the internet so I'm probably wrong and nobody knows for sure what Putin's long term plan is.

[1] https://w7.pngwing.com/pngs/864/537/png-transparent-ukraine-...