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I'll nitpick here and say that Russia's plan was more likely to topple the government and put a puppet in place and then leave, but they botched that.

> Russia wants to rule over Ukraine, not destroy it.

Can’t it be both? It’s hard to argue they aren’t trying to destroy it. It has been attempted in the past during the Holodomor.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

The context of post-civil war stalinism and food/industrial policy was a little different from modern Russian empire-building.

Russia's end goal here is a cultural genocide.

Russia destroys its colonies. It wants to destroy ukraine. And it wants cultural genocide.