"For now, all we know is that the first stage of the war included an ill-fated march on Kyiv and a failed attempt to encircle Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. Was it a part of the plan for a broad occupation or a way of distracting Ukrainian forces while Russia was establishing the land corridor to Crimea?"
I see some journalists are still giving credibility to the idea that Russia's attempt to take Kyiv was some sort of distraction on a large scale.