Russia and Ukraine

[Leonardo17]

"The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom."  - Master Sun

I dont disagree with the notion that it was wise to pull back once you realized you cant stand where you are.
Yet
In face of the original objectives of the whole campaign, the importance to actually hold an area which you claim to have annexed, and that area you cant hold being a key to holding another area you already have annexed a few years back, in light of all this the future still may look bleak.

One small possibility could also be that his entourage might have started to force Putin to look at things in a more reasonable way.
My second theory on this is that, there were rumors of Putin fighting some sort of severe illness in February (and that even his poop was removed from the airplanes he used so that no one could verify these theories).
My third opinion could be that thing have started to happen within the entirely closed atmosphere of the Kremlin and that we as the public will start to hear about these things perhaps some 10 / 20 years later when some archives will be accessed and made public (like the opening of the ancient archives of the STAZI after the Unification East-Germany with West Germany in October 1990).