Quite illuminating, and more coherent than that Pepe Escobar video (he claimed that the exemplary encirclement of Kiev would be studied in military schools for the ages)

Globally it presupposes that all of the sieges of major cities are feints except for Mariupol (never intended to take Kyiv, Chernihiv etc... the capture of Kherson was presumably an accident...)

It raises the question of whether this was the original plan, in which case all the talk of denazification, decapitation of the regime, rollback of NATO was just so much masterful fug-of-war misdirection on Putin's part.

Which is possible I suppose, but one wonders if he thinks the cost in troops, material, treasure, destruction of the Russian economy etc. was worth the rather small-change extension of Russian control of eastern Ukraine?

It seems that the Ukrainian government has understood the big-arrow manoeuvre, in any case :

Russia is moving forces from northern to eastern Ukraine to try to encircle Ukrainian troops, but is keeping some behind near the capital Kyiv to tie down part of the Ukrainian military there, a presidential adviser said on national television.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}