Well... If he is not trying to invade Ukraine, what is he trying to do?

One hypothesis making the rounds on Twitter is that Putin’s bombing campaign was targeting US funded biolabs in Ukraine [0][1] which the Russians have previously complained about [2]

[0] https://twitter.com/Manifestor4/status/1497162095762288672/p...

[1] https://twitter.com/jqkennedy17/status/1496793895040008192/p...

[2] https://www.newsweek.com/russia-china-nikolai-patrushev-vlad...

I don't buy it. That didn't need an invasion prepared for many months. It's spending billions to do something that could be done for millions.

I agree, bombing labs from the air doesn't warrant boots on the ground, so it's obviously not the full explanation. I shared the hypothesis because grandparent comment asked what other reason there could be - this was one.

Not exactly the question you asked but this Twitter thread talks about, why Putin wants to invade Ukraine:

https://mobile.twitter.com/akheriaty/status/1497835354933526...

Answer: multiple potential reasons = it’s complicated

They don’t want to destroy Ukraine. They want to make it a puppet state that they can extract value from economically. Smashing everything is counterproductive if that is your goal.

That's backwards.