This point about surrendering is really important. Putin has always seen this as a conflict between brother Slavs, fellow Russians. He went in with kid gloves when he launched the SMO in hopes of scaring Kiev into a quick peace deal and avoiding bloodshed. It has been well documented that as Russia advanced into these 4 separatist provinces, that they brought an army of humanitarian aid workers and engineers to help rebuild and provide housing, food, etc for the civilian population. Orders from the very top were to treat surrendering soldiers well and there were firings after videos of Ukrainian POWs emerged being roughly handled, duct taped, etc.

I'm not going to claim they were saints, but there was a clear effort to fight according to "American" principles, to be surgical with strikes, protect civilians, etc as we have attempted to do the last 20 years. At some level, demonstrating that the Russian army could fight that way was a matter of pride. Putin had to finally swallow that pride after a particular peace deal which had quietly been arranged fell through after Biden had a talk with Zelensky. Zelensky went from agreeable one day to saying no peace unless Russia handed over everything, submitted to war crimes tribunals, and Putin himself had to be deposed. That's when Putin took the gloves off.

The whole damn thing is just a tragedy and it's being needlessly perpetuated by the WEF/Davos puppeteers and the Uniparty who see this as a generational opportunity to wipe out Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The EU globalists want to expand, so a generation of Ukrainian men are being sacrificed.