What if the objective was to take those four territories and deplete Ukraine of the manpower to take them back?
I don’t think Putin ever wanted to capture or destroy all of Ukraine.
I think he wanted those four territories and he wanted them secure from counterattack.
That leads us to Biden’s objectives in this war.
Does anybody know?
At the beginning of the war Putin tried to take Kyiv. If he had succeeded he would have installed a puppet president and taken over Ukraine. But he underestimated the resolve of the Ukrainians. Remember, millions were starved under Stalin. The Ukrainians remember that.