Yes that is their goal, what was putins, has Putin succeeded, certainly not yet
But time will tell
Saying either side has failed is like saying Allie’s have failed June 5th
A few last points:
There are no morals in war. War is an immoral act. The best you can do if you go to war is to make sure you have a Just War. When we pushed this into a war by putting the Russians in a position where they can articulate a realistic security threat to themselves, we lost that argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory
Up until October 2021, we can make the argument that arming, training, and feeding Ukraine intel was defensive and intended to prevent a true war of aggression by Russia (i.e. create a cost if Russia invades). But once we pulled the lever on unconditional NATO membership in October 2021 and tried to fastrack this, ignoring anything the Russians said, we lost that argument entirely. At that point we became the antagonist of war and threatened someone else (yes, putting tanks and missiles on Russia’s border is a threat to them even, if in your mind we’re always the good guys).
Post Cold War, and especially post 9-11, the US has changed dramatically. We today have an expeditionary military used to further our political and economic agenda in a vacuum of any true national security argument. We have become offensive (Libya 2011, Iraq 2003, Venezuela 2020) not defensive and our cause is seldom our own security. (1) Post Cold War left the US as the only true worlds super power. This created a situation where there are no consequences for our actions. We act with impunity, break conventions, withdraw from agreements, lie, cheat, are hypocrites and simply do what we want since the ultimate underwriter of a foreign policy is the military. (2) Post 9-11 what began as a GWOT (a term no longer used) morphed into our policy makers using our military as a foreign legion in pursuit of economic and political interests. Instead of the GWOT drawing down, our huge defense and intel budgets remained, our large oversea footprint continued, and we simply began to shift to new targets that have NOTHING to do with our national security in reality, example: Syria, Venezuela, attacking Libya, now Ukraine...
Back to Ukraine: You nor anyone else can articulate a viable national security argument for what we did. Because there isn’t one.
What the proponents of this stupid war are left with are Cold War boogieman arguments that are not even remotely based on a realistic capability of the Russian military nor realistic regards their economy and political system.
What you also cannot realistically argue, is that we Americans are wealthier, safer, or more free because of this.
So what was this war? It was pure arrogance. We are strong (political, economic, military), Russia is weak, and we do what we want.
And in the meantime, we talk about moral BS causes like democracy, human rights, sovereignty, all while we literally support kingdoms in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, have mainland China (a single party communist regime with the a rights record about as bad as it comes) as our #1 trade partner, as our most favored trade partner, who we helped into the WTO (the same year tanks rolled of pro democracy students on Tienanmen square)... Did we care about Libya’s or Iraq’s sovereignty when we invaded or attacked them? Do we care about some of the Pacific Islands sovereignty whom we bully to prevent the Chinese from gaining naval ports in the Pacific? These ideas are today selectively pulled from our @ss whenever we want to go to war and have no justification.
***Only in this war you have limited objectives.***
Russia is not looking for the complete capitulation of Ukraine, nor are they really interested in taking Kiev and the more nationalist areas, they do not want to really destroy more than necessary (it's one of their major trade partners, 1/3 of the people there have family ties to Russia, they speak a similar language, many are Orthodox...)... This was a war Russia did not want but was from their perspective forced to have because of Western meddling in Ukraine and military expansion Eastward which threatens them.
But Ukraine is cooked.
The question now is just how many more people (Ukrainians) our leaders want to send to their graves before they end this. While we talk about “sovereignty,” the reality is that Ukraine's leaders were hand picked by us, their finances are run by us, they depend on our intel, our weapons, our money, our training, our political backing (pushing allies to help, sanctions of Russia etc)... If we say end it, it ends. Trump isn't kidding when he says he can end this in 24 hours.
Can we keep it going? I suspect for while, Ukraine is scratching bottom in trying to get warm bodies to stuff into uniform, but I think they probably can hold on for a while. It's hard to tell because while you have inflated and total BS casualty reports for the Russians in our MSM, you have a veil of secrecy and silence regards Ukraine and their manpower and losses. Occasionally you get a report where you get some credible, empirical indicators (example the leaks which Newsweek publicized), but most is JUNK. However:
***Continuing this war will no longer change the outcome.***
In gamble, after the hand is dealt and wagers are made, people can fold, but eventually there comes a point where you have to show your hand and you can't change your mind anymore at that point. That's already happened. The play has been made.
But to answer your question, yes Putin got what he wanted:
1. If the West is going to purge Russian influence form Ukraine (that's what Maiden really was), then Russia will take those areas of Ukraine where they see they have a claim.
2. Russia wants to weaken Ukraine and the military build up which was happening there to the point where they no longer perceive them as a threat. That has been accomplished.
3. They want to create a punitive cost for Ukraine, i.e. make Ukraine think twice before they try this again. I'm sure that was accomplished.
4. Send a message to the West - stop trying to expand NATO into former Soviet and border states. We did NOT receive that message in 2008 with the Republic of Georgia, we didn't receive the message in Ukraine 2014, but I am sure we have received the message today. Russia isn't kidding, do not try to put tanks and missiles on their border. They do not want that and are willing to take military action to prevent such if need be.
You need to realize, this is a limited campaign. It's not total war and about total defeat of an enemy. This is the use of military force in order to achieve political ends. It is literally Clausewitz 101: “war is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means...”
Here’s what’s especially nasty about this war:
—We have no true self defense or security argument.
—We did lie (NATO East expansion), we did go back on a treaty (ballistic missile treaty which plays a role in all of this), we did cheat (Minsk - even though we didn’t sign to it), and we are constantly trying to push the Turks to violate Moneteux.
—We did back a bunch of right wing whack-jobs.
—We are relying heavily on a mercenary army which we in turn pay for (Ukraine is even paying them in USD).
—We are willing to gamble really high if it’s with other peoples lives.
—We had our own government censoring what you get to see and hear so that you feel the right way about all of this and our MSM cooperated.
—We did coerce other nations into sanctioning Russia (example: Pakistan, Egypt...) and some of these nations are suffering from this.
—We did blow up a pipeline which an ally relies on and then of course lied about that too.
This does not look good for us. Folks in the US might see our actions of those of the knight in shining armor riding in to fight for democracy, justice, freedom and sovereignty, but the rest of the world does NOT see it like that. Only in those places where the Western media and government censors have control is that the prevailing perspective (North America, Europe and Australia).
As soon as you cross the border into Mexico you already have an entirely different view of this Ukraine war and our actions there. India, not a rosey picture, and in fact if you want to get some reports that aren’t censored by us but show the Russian perspective or talk about some of the less flattering aspects of this war they discuss it. The Middle East media... It’s a sad time when Al Jazeera basically writes an article which completely references US Congress and our own media years past, but our own media quickly and convienently forgot or even deletes some of this once we decided we’re supposed to wave the Ukraine flag: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regiment