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Notes -
I will admit that I don't look at pro-Russian sources very much. That being said, do you have any examples of pro-Russian or otherwise non-Western sources who argued that Ukraine would be difficult to take and likely to lead to stalemate? And what ulterior motives could the West have possibly had for intentionally underestimating Ukraine's defense capabilities? To convince Russia that Ukraine was a soft target so that they'd invade and get bogged down? It's possible, but if that was the case, and there was plenty of non-Western concern about Ukraine's capabilities, then Russia took the bait hook, line, and sinker. I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to argue here. You seem to be at least mildly pro-Russian, but you're essentially arguing that Russia is incompetent because they knew that situation was likely to turn into the fiasco it has become but decided to go in anyway. That's why the OP was asking what the point was, because from where things stand now, the war doesn't look rational.
Simultaneous pressure is a pretty standard military tactic. If he thinks he can take Kiev in a few weeks, his job is made a lot harder if the Ukrainians concentrate their forces there. If he attacks on a broad front from the South and East, in addition to the North, the Ukrainians have to spread themselves more thinly—defending Kiev is kind of pointless if the Russians roll across the rest of the country unopposed. Moscow had also been pushing the idea for years that Russian-speaking Ukrainians were an oppressed minority who would prefer to be part of Russia, and there was some thought that heavily Russian regions of Ukraine would lie down like Crimea did in 2014.
There is a chasm between Ukraine being "difficult to take" and "rolled within weeks or days." No, I do not have a ready list of examples from over a year ago. Do you have a single Russian source making that claim? How many examples of pro-Russian sources would convince you Russians didn't think they would take Ukraine within weeks or days?
If you frame something which almost certainly won't happen as the measure of "success," because it's simply expected, then the thing which won't happen will be evidence of your enemy's failure. It sets up a narrative of the heroic defense and given the laughable propaganda stories pushed by major Western outlets for the last year, e.g., ghost of kiev, spaghetti sauce anti-air, snake island defense, and many more, it sets the opportunity to help. Ukraine is winning, they're engaged in heroic defense, Russian failure is immense, their military is totally incompetent, and they could be defeated with just some help.
The media campaign starkly changed before the invasion and after the invasion. It went from years talking about beefing up Ukrainian defenses and army to Russia conquering Kiev in 3 days or else they're a joke. I have seen nothing to think any of this western "info"tainment had any effect on Russian decisionmaking at all.
I am not pro-Russian. I have been following this war since the maiden coup in 2014. I am arguing none of that. I answered the OP in another comment.
Yes, that's the point. You don't need to wildly speculate about motives, understandings, or anything, you can simply read what Russians are saying. It's odd most of the people on this board refuse to do any of that (they're lying after all) and at the same time swallow NATO talking points through their obvious mouthpieces in western media and have formed their entire opinion based on it.
Not only this - there are Russian sources widely available that had, in the first days of the war, proclaimed this already happened. They already had the content prepared for the collapse of the Ukraine government and the glorious Russian victory, and in the rush to be the first to celebrate, somebody hit the button a little too early and that content became available to all. With all the texts about Ukrainian nazi government collapsing and Ukraine gladly joining the brotherly embrace of Russia and all that. Yes, I saw those with my own eyes, as did everybody in the internet who understands Russian (not sure if it was ever translated? Google probably can do it well enough by now).
You can, just don't believe what they are saying this minute has anything to do with the truth. They say a lot of things, and only some of them can be believed. They also say a lot of diametrically contradicting things, and a lot of things that are plain lies. So you need to correlate what they are saying with what they are doing. If they say "we are going to smash Ukraine because it's fake state and it all belongs to Russia" and then they try to smash Ukraine - then it's clear they were telling the truth. If they say "we are here only to protect the civilian population" and then they blow up a theater full of refugees and a residential neighborhood - they it's clear they were lying.
Neat. So what? I didn't make the claim that no Russian said it.
Perhaps this is true and perhaps you did, but the person I am responding to did not and that's part of the point of my post. He writes as if this was some sort of universally agreed upon outcome and it didn't happen because of reasons X, Y, or Z, all of which he believes because he only looks at particular sources while not seeing anything else even while acknowledging those sources are comically biased and have incentives to lie.
you cannot simultaneously claim these things
I didn't write Russians only tell the truth. What has been done is what Russians are saying now and have been saying for decades is ignored and instead in its place are the rambling speculations of NATO funded "thinktanks" printed in op-eds across Western media to present a narrative to support the debacle in Ukraine.
Yes I can. Russians will say whatever serves them at the moment (or at least whatever they think does, most of them aren't geniuses). It could be the truth, or it could be lies, it could be revealing their intent or concealing it. You need to consider who said it, when, why and in what context - and then even lies can reveal some truths behind them. For example, Russian lying about Ukraine being "fake state with fake nation" reveals the truth that Russia wants to destroy Ukrainian statehood and not just secure a couple of enclaves with Russian-speaking population. You can't believe their words but you can believe the intent behind them.
Exactly the opposite. Exactly from studying what they lied for decades and what they are lying now, and identifying the rare cases they didn't lie and when these cases happened, we could deduce so much about their real thought process and their real intent. You are confusing "ignoring" and "taking at face value". One absolutely shouldn't ignore them and also absolutely should never ever take it at face value.
I'm not sure what this means. Nobody on the West supports Russian invasion into Ukraine (at least nobody that has access to op-eds, there are all kinds of people around of course). So what narrative are you talking about?
Okay, you only meant to make a comment on the intent of the speaker. Many Russians and pro-Russians sources do in fact care about how closely their statements reflect reality, i.e., the truth, and this is evidenced by them being consistently correct about statements they have made about the conflict.
No, I mean the Western media literally ignored them for the most part, i.e., didn't bother to address the statements they were making for the reasons they didn't any particular thing or disagreed with any particular thing. I agree no statements should be taken at face value when there are reasons to think they're not. However, this cuts both ways in this conflict.
The narrative of the conflict. How it began, the history of the conflict, how it's going now, which side is good, which side is bad, etc. It is true no one writing op-eds in WaPo or similar "news" orgs support Russian invasion of Ukraine and this has caused much of the problem of perceptions in places such as these compared to realities on the ground or the history of the conflict.
Instead of addressing Russian statements of concern or demands, they're simply waived away and instead convenient narratives about what really happened and what Putler really wants fill the pages of Western media. Looking at both sides of the media complexes, whether or not Russians would love to manipulate and lie or not, their capability to actually do so isn't even on the same planet as the shock-and-awe campaign carried out by Western media on their various populations in order to establish support for proxy war in Ukraine. Almost comical lies have been disseminated and are still believed by large portions of people in the West, e.g., the snake island last stand, ghost of kiev, spaghetti sauce grandma anti-air extroidinaire, casualty numbers, etc.
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