I think trying to second guess what is going on in Ukraine without having any media sources to weigh up against our Western media narrative, (that we know from experience, lies like hairy eggs!) is likely to come up with the wrong conclusions.
Maybe that is the mistake being made also by our Western politicians, they are actually taking our media narrative as guidance, and acting on that, rather than paying for (and listening to) proper military intelligence.
Western media and its owners are running this shit-show, they own the media and the media owns them, no-one is actually paying attention to any of the things that matter, it seems to me. What we are seeing could be the f"ck up to end all f*ck ups. I just hope we see some sense before it goes nuclear, because they don't seem to have have noticed that would be the final straw for the environment, and so far every decision made has had maximum negative impact to life and environmental damage. Neither Putins mob nor our mob seem to be aware of or care about the incredible harm being done to the environment, all previous estimates of worst case are now null and void, they have wiped out the few decades we thought we had left to fix things, in a matter of a few weeks.
Now we are looking at global poverty (at least in the West), and blackouts this winter, whilst extreme weather events are cascading, and they are planning nuclear power stations for UK taking 7.5 years and hundreds of Billions to bring online, besides throwing us back into the dark ages, what planet are they on?