>>512171460
>And for 3 years russia has failed to defeat ukraine.
The worst-case scenario for Russia would have been a quick war that kept the Ukrainian nationalists in place and supported covertly by "the west"(alongside a stab-in-the-back mythology).
The best-case scenario for Russia is to kill and/or demoralize the Ukrainian nationalists. Then slowly convincing Ukrainians to become refugees who move long enough to get jobs and houses and spouses, so that they never want to go back.
Basically, Russia needs to continue sieging every Ukrainian town and destroying infrastructure to make life absolutely miserable so that the Ukrainians who hate Russia will leave and never come back, or they can just die defending and thus never come back.
To put it simply, when Russia sieges Kiev, all the ethnic Ukrainians will either die fighting or flee to Lwow or to the EU. That is the best strategic outcome for Russia. Annexing all the important land free of Ukrainian nationalists, and leaving a worthless piece of land for them to all move to and become a burden for the EU.