> EDIT: IT IS!

Genius, i'm going to start putting this at the end of all my comments. An utterly unanswerable rhetorical move.

This might have worked in 1918 or 1948, but even in the 60s and 70s, satellite and aviation recon would find this kind of trap... It's an obsolete idea from a bygone era. What happens now is, your artillery is spotted by overflight (drone, satellite, plane) or ground asset and the trap is either destroyed or kept busy so it can't be moved while the attack takes another direction. What you are seeing is Russian assets being "fixed in place" thinking their trap is working while Ukraine is making the "real" attack somewhere else.

If they could destroy the Ukrainian forces with artillery, why have they not already done that?

Sure, this frees them to shell civilians but that’s hardly much of a victory

what are you talking about? This may have been small scale tactics, but abandoning the only regional capital they had managed to seize in 8 months of war is not a feint, it's a failure.

Feigned retreat is a known tactic so already accounted for by leaders

Cuz that worked so well in Kharkiv, right? By that logic Russia should be taking back that area any day now...

Is it though?

They haven't retaken any significant cities with this strategy (and please don't start telling me about some farming village like Makiivka with three houses and a barn).

If this was an actual successfully deployed strategy, and not just cope, then they would have made it a lot farther, and destroyed a lot more of the UA than they have.