I do not believe that Russia ever intended to take over all of Ukraine.
Putin attacked with 190,000 men. That is a very, very small fraction of what it would take to conquer and hold all of Ukraine. For comparison, the Germans had 1.5 million men when they attacked Poland.
No. Putin's goal last February was to scare the West and Ukraine into negotiating, into taking seriously Russia's security concerns and addressing their proposals for a European Security Treaty, which they had been trying to negotiate since 2010, and which Putin had pushed forward very vigorously for the last time in December 2021.
AND PUTIN'S PLAN WORKED.
In March, Ukraine and Russia had negotiated a peace treaty in Istanbul, and in early April, both sides were ready to sign. Boris Johnson, acting on behalf of the collective West, flew to Kiev and demanded that Zelensky NOT SIGN THE TREATY. The Ukrainian media reported on this at the time:
Since then, things have changed, and I now believe that Russia perceives a need to take all of Ukraine in order to achieve its goals.
This is very sad, but it is, alas, the only avenue open to Putin.
He knows he cannot negotiate with Ukraine and the West. He knows this because of what Boris Johnson did last April.
He knows this because of what Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko all admitted recently. He had tried to negotiate with the West over Donbas, they signed an agreement, and now we know OFFICIALLY that the Minsk Accords were not worth the paper it was printed on.
So Russia has no partner with which to negotiate peace.
That means there is only one way forward for Russia. That is why they have assembled 650,000 troops to march into Ukraine. That is an occupation force.
As far as the Donbas is concerned, that was a revolt by ethnic Russian Ukrainians who did not accept the coup government in Kiev. Russia did not need to foment this. It was a natural reaction to Yatsenyuk's declaration that Kiev was going to "cleanse the subhumans" from the Eastern part of Ukraine.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/06/ukraine-echoes-of-the-third-reich-yatsenyuks-subhumans-.html
