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I agree that the media is clueless here.

The media is generally clueless about anything other than the leftist message and propaganda they are told to spew. It has been obvious for years, decades even that they don't bother to do any research, proof reading, nor editing. It is all about the narrative.

Anyway, I *think* I'm starting to see what is going on in Ukraine. Granted this is just an engineer's view from thousands of miles away but consider:

Putin is old school, so are his supporters. They like the idea of the glory days of the Soviet Union. They at least like the idea of buffer states. Finally, they have some real (and probably valid) concerns with having a NATO member nation right in their face with a decent sized military of their own, access to NATO resources, and poised uncomfortably close to Caspian Sea oil fields which Russia depends upon. After all, we demonstrated to the world that we could run a campaign of rapid armor advancement a couple of times now in the Middle East. That was across mostly unforgiving desert. Southern Russia is much more tank/armor friendly terrain with many more roads. A few rivers, but those are easily crossed, NATO has been practicing that for decades in preparation for war in Europe.

So I believe Putin has two strategic objectives. First, keep Ukraine out of NATO. Second, install a pro-Russian or at least Russia-friendly government. Maybe something similar to Belarus which occasionally makes some noise, but is still there for Russia - heck some invasion forces have apparently come through Belarus.

In light of those probable strategic goals Putin wouldn't want his military stomping across Ukraine destroying everything in it's path. They want a conquered Ukraine that they can use for resources, not a drain on their own. They also don't want a united Ukrainian population rising up against them. They're also trying to do this "on the cheap" without committing overwhelming forces and resources. As a consequence we're seeing a number of "odd" things:

They don't want to hit the civilian population too hard, that could lead to an insurgency that would last years.
They want the Ukrainians to just slip back into a familiar role with the big bear in charge.
They are being relatively easy on the civilian population - suffering taunts and verbal abuses etc. at the hands of civilians.
They have limited their strikes on civilian areas to relatively small, isolated uses of force. Maybe to take out a particular target. Maybe as a small demonstration, carrot & stick style of how bad it could be if they keep resisting.
They are sticking to roadways - this eases logistics compared to going overland.
They are limiting their advance and chewing up civilians while putting pressure on the Ukrainian government and their allies.

In short - they are only pushing as hard as they need to, not as hard as they could. The pressure will continue to build through slow advancements, taking more territory. There will be ever increasing hardships on the Ukrainian people. Eventually Ukraine will have to negotiate a peace, or Russia will have taken enough territory and cities to declare/install their own government and unilaterally declare a halt to hostilities. Then anyone that continues fighting will be labeled terrorists...

I think much of what your saying makes sense, especially the parts about old school and not wanting to use overwhelming destructive force to start with, but now things have changed.

Sticking to roads probably has something to do with the mud, they have to stick to roads because they can’t get the tracks and support vehicles reliably overland.

They actually are deliberately targeting civilians and trying to instill terror. Hence the Nuclear power plant attack and cluster bombing civilian areas. This is about trying to stop them from wanting to resist. Probably will have opposite effect.

I 100% agree that they want to install a puppet government, but now that will be impossible. The country is going to be a smoldering insurgency for years at least, and that’s if things go well for the Russians now.