Contrary to corporate media and Biden Administration spokespeople, Russia has not been targeting civilian populations. It if it were, many hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians would be dead and Kyiv would look like post World War II Dresden, or modern day Bakhmut.
Instead, Russia primary strategy is to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table by destroying Ukraine's military power while minimizing civilian casualties.
The tactics being used to achieve this are succinctly outlined in this August 2022 Marine Corps Paper The Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Maneuverist Paper No. 22: Part II: The mental and moral realms by Marinus.
It is only 12 pages. Well worth reading.
Once Ukraine is forced back to the negotiating table, Russia will have four primary requirements to ending the war with Ukraine remaining a country:
1) Ukraine remains neutral, i.e. Ukraine agrees not to be come a NATO country and most likely not joining the European Common Market.
2) Ukraine must recognize that the Russian language, Russian culture areas of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia are no longer part of Ukraine. Ukraine will further recognize that Crimea is once again part of Russia as it had been for 200 years prior to the USSR/Russia giving administrative control of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. Russia may include allowing in international observers to monitor elections where the peoples of these regions vote their preference to be remain part of Ukraine or join Russia.
3) Some limits on the size of the Ukrainian military.
4) Removal of avowed Nazis from positions of power in Ukraine's government and possible removal of recently created monuments honoring Nazis.
As this is a Proxy War, Russia will likely have some requirement for the United States and NATO to achieve peace.
RUSSIA DOES NOT WANT TO TAKE OVER UKRAINE
Russia wants to avoid the nightmare of maintaining control of non-Russian language/heritage portions of Ukraine and would prefer to have Ukraine as independent trading partner interfacing with both Russia and Western Europe.
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