Everything has its costs. I'm speculating here, as Russian officials never claimed quick victory. But my theory is that they indeed had a plan to quickly capture big Ukrainian cities (not necessarily Kiev) with help of some traitors. This plan did not work well, probably Ukrainian special services managed to prevent that plan. So they regrouped at east border and slowly demolishing Ukrainian army. It's not humiliating. It's smart. Many wars were lost because warmasters were too stubborn and tried to continue already lost cause. That's not the case here. Right now I don't see any change for Ukraine to survive this war. Their army will be destroyed, Russia apparently is too strong and did not collapse under sanctions and probably can continue its military pressure for months if not years, while Ukrainian front is breaking apart and more soldiers are giving up every day.

There's Russian adage: don't say gop until you jump over. This war is far from ending and early Russian mistakes did not turned into significant issues.

Claiming only 20% of the country is humiliating?

I suppose they can fortify that and come back in 10 years and take the rest.

Remember when Hannibal destroyed the Roman armies? That sure was humiliating.

What happened next?

It is yes. Because their initial goal here was instead to go in and overthrow the government in a couple days, while not expecting any significant international response.

There is a huge difference between their initial expectations, and what actually happened. And now they are in too deep to undo their mistakes.

I'll send you a $1,000 over Venmo or in Bitcoin if you can share where even a single top level Russian official said that amoung their goals was to take the capital.

They landed airborne troops at the capital, and had a very long convoy headed for the capital.

Regardless of what they said, they tried to attack the capital. That says more about whether they tried to take the capital than public statements.

> their goals was to take the capital.

You think those large amount of troops and resources, that were in the process of attempting to surround and take the capital were just sacrificed for no reason?

They spent a lot of resources on those attacks, and they didn't gain much from them.

Surely you should consider that it was a mistake, and don't think it was intentional for them to have taken such losses with little to show for it.

You're thinking like a westerner as are so many other armchair generals. Russia military doctrine has more tolerance for loosing people and equipment if that helps achieve their end goal.

But you understand that there isn't some end goal that doing this failed offensive helps right?

As in, they could have just not done a failed attack on the capital, and instead focused their troops on other regions to achieve some other goal.

However many resources they sacrificed on that attack could have been sacrificed elsewhere more effectively, which shows pretty clearly that this specific failed offensive wasn't some success and instead was a failed offensive that they had to back off on.