Realistically, Russia just wants to cause chaos in Western Ukraine whilst rolling over the parts of Ukraine in the East where they have popular support.
Russia doesn't want to take areas it doesn't have popular support in. It just wants to do exactly what it did to Georgia, punish its opponents and annex the friendly bits.
Everyone's doom-mongering, but Russia has a clear strategy.
The east of Ukraine is the most heavily fortified due to literal war since the 2014 separatists.
Russia's strategy thus far has been to walk around and ignore the east, and instead attack big cities like Kyiv or Kharkhiv.
Russia's biggest gains have been their amphibious assaults from the south / Crimea.
But all attacks from the north and east have been lackluster this far. And bypassing the fortified line means that Ukraine has the ability to attack those overextended units in the rear.
Russia seems like they are rushing this. I think a slower, more deliberate advance would help the Russians here, they really shouldn't be trying to take cities yet just 3 or 4 days into the conflict. The Russians should have tried for air superiority and strengthened supply lines for a more drawn out assault.
Of course, I don't know the Russian supply situation. It could be that these units know they don't have enough supplied for a drawn out battle and are rushing because they need a quick victory?
The other theory is that Russia is doing the Cannon fodder strategy, purposefully sacrificing weaker troops to the enemy to eat up Ukraine's ammunition (javalin missiles or whatnot).
Russia having a clear strategy doesn't mean that it's working out for them. Preliminary analysis seems to indicate that the start of this hasn't gone how Russia would've liked: militarily, justification-wise, or popular support of. There are reports of even the previous Russian-leaning people in Eastern Ukraine rapidly losing support for Russia after this insane offensive (like Russian citizenry and even Duma member now). The doom-mongering is valid because what kind of futile flailing does Russia do when their "clear strategy" for a quick and decisive victory doesn't fall through. Admit defeat and lose face, or lash out?
Pro-Russia parties got less than 10% of the vote in the last election. It is hard to imagine that the sentiment moved in Putins favor since then.
Putin is invading a country that nearly unanimously opposes him with troops that thought that they were just there for an exercise and don't really want to invade their brother country.
There are very few districts, that have more than 50% support for the pro-Russian party. You also can't assume that the voters that voted for a pro Russian party want to be part of Russia and support the invasion.
Barking at the wrong tree. Putin threatened Estonia, Letonia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Moldavia, Georgia and Bulgaria. He said Ukraine shouldn't exist as a country and there is no such thing as Ukranians. The guy then threatened Sweden and Finland with military consequences if they join NATO. People that try and minimise this are simply playing into his propaganda. He also threatened the US with consequences it has never seen in its entire history (couldn't have been any other country he could have referred to because the above have seen everything). Belarus’ Lukasenka already said they need to monitor the “situation” all the way to Berlin and requested Russian S400s.
Depends on Putin's goals. Taking government buildings only might be a reasonably low casualty operation, while taking the city might be a high casualty operation. But there's little value in the latter, so I would bet he'll go for a siege of the city itself while using air power and cavalry to take the government buildings.
