The CEO is a banker. Naturally he sees M&A, not innovation, as the company's future.

It's been an M&A company for years now. Just look at its portfolio of ownerships in competing local leaders like Didi, Yandex and Grab. It's a perfect food delivery ride hailing super app investment fund!

Didi and Grab weren't M&A to Uber, Uber in their cities/countries were acquired by Didi/Grab via stock.

How is that different? You could just rephrase what you said to say:

Uber purchased non-trivial shareholder positions in their global competitors.

For example the case in Russia was a quite literally a merger. Uber and Yandex made a joint venture, which operates in Russia and some former eastern bloc countries.

Increase network, decrease spending to beat out a competitor.

True, I could see them going down the route of heavy discounting / price promotion.

Distraction and probably an excuse why they have high liabilities.

I don't see the difference, personally.