Now that the Russians have switched tactics from pursuing a rapid victory on the cheap (failed miserably) and reverted to the mean of leveling Ukrainian cities to the ground like they did with Grozny and Aleppo, the goals of the operation are likely changing as well 🧵
If at the start Putin was trying to go for a quick decapitation of Ukrainian leadership and installation of a pro-Russian leader (eg Medvedchuk), that seems completely unrealistic now (if it ever were) since he has pretty much turned the entire Ukrainian population against Russia
He also doesn't have the time to engage in a brutal occupation given the internal pressures that are already starting to materialize inside Russia
A number of Russian oligarchs, actors, TV personalities, etc are coming out against this war on a scale we really haven't seen since at least the First Chechen War in the 1990s
The unpopularity of this war inside Russia (not to mention the universal international outrage) is going to multiply dramatically with each coming day (along with casualties)
Thus, Putin is going to need a resolution to the war in the next few weeks or it will create serious problems for him domestically
Putin also can't pull back now without losing face - having talked about Ukraine (with its mythical nuclear weapons) as an existential threat to Russia. Now that he has already incurred the severe economic sanctions costs and diplomatic isolation, he has to show something for it
Putin's only hope now is likely to rapidly unleash utter brutality on the Ukrainian people (which he has already started on by shooting MLRS rockets into Kharkiv and other cities) in order to get major concessions from Zelensky in the negotiations
Putin's minimum bar for a negotiated solution now would likely be Ukraine conceding Crimea to Russia, agreement to never join NATO and EU and some form of demilitarization (eg. no NATO infrastructure in Ukraine)
His problem is that it's highly unlikely that Zelensky and the rest of the Ukrainian leadership would accept these conditions so the war and the insurgency that will follow it can drag out for a long time
And the longer it goes on, the more precarious Putin's position will become domestically. A palace coup is going to become increasingly likely over time
Of course, tragically, it will also mean tens of thousands of dead civilians and unimaginable destruction in Ukraine