Russian state news declared victory too soon and quickly deletes article

The danger now is that Putin may be irreversibly committed, backed into a corner. Doesn't matter that it was a situation of his own making--it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Ukrainians are rightly Russians as he claims, then what he's done is proven in spectacular fashion that Russian culture is capable of building a modern, progressive, and democratic national identity to which the population is willing to give their lives. That undeniably poses an existential crisis for the Russian regime and more generally it's entire historical political self-identity.

I know some people have argued that this is why Putin invaded in the first place. But I believe Putin, like most Russians, simply believed that the political culture was incapable of democracy. And most of the West strongly suspected that as well. IMO, Putin merely wanted to consolidate what he considered to be areas of natural cultural affinity, to Russia's geostrategic benefit, of course.

Russia only wants to annex the eastern parts of the country, and do to rest of Ukraine what the US and NATO did to Afghanistan and Iraq. With this perspective they're very much on track with what they want to accomplish.

Russia is going to leave most of western Ukraine in a power vacuum and instability and let the world deal with it.

In a nutshell, yes. They apparently believed their own bullshit, which is hard to grasp but that seems to be the case. More and more evidence of extremely unrealistic timetables and tons of under-estimations regarding supply lines and required resources are surfacing. Initially the theory was that this was part of some grand plan but more and more the picture that emerges is one of extreme optimism compounded by old materiel, demotivated troops and outright incompetence.

That doesn't mean that this is over, but it could have been a whole lot worse at this point in time. Unfortunately the future is still wide open.

The Kremlins true motivation is to create a Greater Russia. Russia will not allow for an independent Ukraine. This is consistent with Putins speech before the invasion on how Ukraine isn't really a country.

Ukrainians understand this and that's why they are begging to join NATO. They are not trying to unnecessarily provoke Russia, but they already understand that Russia is an existential threat to them now.

Some argued before that Ukraine should become a neutral buffer state, but that is simply not an option with the current Russian ambitions.