This sounds like Putin trying to avoid win the war, lose the occupation syndrome by putting in his puppet without having to occupy Ukraine. Not sure how that would work. We used to be successful in turning that trick in South America in dumping South American commie governments without occupying them until we decided to go with the win the war, lose the occupation Middle East model. Best one we did was conspiring to get commie Allende driven from power and this earth and replaced with Pinochet who completely turned around the country from a wreck into the most economically successful in South America and eventually brought in democracy. Chile should be thanking us. I doubt Ukraine will be thanking Putin.
Early on, most people thought he would take Donbas and overthrow Zelensky, installing a pro-soviet puppet government to replace him. But the more damage and casualties, the harder it becomes to prop up a puppet without occupation. Thus the importance of the propaganda war to convince people Russians are the good guys and the Ukrainian government is bad (and vice versa).