“I think Odessa was always the goal. If the Russians get and control it they might call it.”
Agreed—that was always the prize.
The Russians missed their chance last year. They needed the Kherson bridgehead for that, and they lost it. The Dneiper is a formidable barrier, and will require a huge engineering effort to cross it again. And the Ukrainians certainly arent going to fail to see such a concentration of material.
Indeed, the Ukrainians have been raiding across the river for months now, trying to bait the Russians to divert forces to beef up their own Dneiper defenses.
Never saw the Russians walking away without Odessa. At this point it would habe been remiss for them *not to take it.
Actually, Kyiv and all of Ukraine was the original goal, except that the Russian attempt at a coup de main was a spectacular failure.