IMHO. the initial thrust on Kyiv was strategic malpractice.
If they had put everything on a southern blitzkrieg along the coast, covered by naval power, supplied by sea, they could have been in Odessa by now and the whole thing a fait accompli.
Instead of getting a 40 mile convoy stuck in the mud and out of fuel. They are lucky the Ukrainians didn't have their long range guns yet else they would have cut that up like confetti.
With the coast controlled, they could have strangled Ukraine into submission with a minimum of effort and material.
Speed was the critical factor. Getting it finished before the west could have coalesced a resistance, before weapons and material could have made their way to the Ukrainians. They had a short window and they blew it.
They might still eventually win in a year or two by continuing to throw young Russian bodies into the meat grinder until they simply drown the Ukrainians in Russian blood. But as Sun Tzu says long expensive wars can destroy a state from within. One would have to assume there are already plots afoot for regime changes as is evidenced by the increasing number of Russian oligarchs accidentally falling out of windows.
