Russia and Ukraine

[Anomalocaris]

Depending on how you define 'winning', there's still a very good chance that Putin could win this thing. His best case scenario, though, is that Russia controls all major Ukrainian cities but spends years and years and years fighting a determined resistance.

Boru

I doubt it.  

Look at the geographic map of the invasion, Both of the major Russian land drives, down from north down into Kyiv, and up from the south from Crimea through Kherson, are alone the Dniper river, the major river in Ukraine that supply water to much the agriculture in Ukraine.    

much of Dniper between Kyiv and Kherson consisted of a cascading series of hydroelectric damns and reservoirs, one after another, built by Stalin.   These reservoirs boardens much of the river into a wide and massive water barrier that divides Ukraine 40/60 east and west.

Look at the linguistic and ethnographic map of Ukraine.   Much of Ukraine near the mouth of the Dniper is primarily Russian speaking and ethnically Russian.    About 3/4 of Ukraine to the east of Dniper is also heavily (about half) Russian speaking and ethnically Russia.  But most Ukraine to the west of Dniper is primarily Ukrainian speaking, with parts of Ukraine, primarily the parts stalin took from other countries at the end of WWII and appended to Ukraine, being primarily Romanian, Hungarian, modovians, polish.

It looks very much like Putin meant to secure the northern and southern ends of Dniper river in Ukraine.   The northern and southern bridgeheads would then be joined by a long, almost continuous series of reserviros along the Dniper river that would then form a barrier between a future Russian Ukraine to the east, and an Ukrainian Ukraine to the west. 

Whether he will annex the eastern Ukraine to Russia out right is hard to say.  But I suspect that is the long term objective if not the next thing on the road map. 

But I suspect he will not annex western Ukraine to the west of Dniper.   He will undoubtedly want to install a pro-Russian  government in western Ukraine, although what form it also hard to say.   But he will undoutedly insist that the Russia or the eastern Russia dominated part of Ukraine retain full control of the Dniper reservoirs, because controlling those reservoirs undoubtedly controls the agriculture of much of Ukraine.   So Russian control of try Dniper river and its reservoirs ensures, from Russian perspective, permanent good, Russian friendly future behavior of the part of Ukraine that is not under Russian control.