It’s also worth remembering Russia’s position in the peace talks that started immediately after the war began:
Few now remember that the war almost ended before it got going. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched ground and air attacks on Ukraine on four fronts. On February 28, 2022, Russian and Ukrainian officials came together in Gomel, Belarus, to start to negotiate peace. Peace talks continued intermittently for a month before being called off…
According to a New York Times analysis of the 2022 negotiations later that year… Russia demanded Ukrainian recognition of its annexation of Crimea in 2014, permanent Ukrainian neutrality, and autonomy for the ethnic Russian provinces, or oblasts, in eastern and southeastern Ukraine.
Russia never wanted to annex Ukraine wholesale. It didn’t even want any new territory.
What tanked these talks was not the Ukranian government, but their NATO puppetmasters:
An even bigger obstacle to further talks may have been the arrival in Kyiv on April 6 of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. According to Davyd Arakhhamia, Ukraine’s chief negotiator at Istanbul, “Johnson brought two simple messages to Kyiv. The first is that Putin is a war criminal; he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the NATO powers] are not.” Three days after Johnson returned home Putin announced publicly that talks with Ukraine “had reached a dead end.” For his part, Johnson promised Zelensky $130 million of military equipment and $500 million kin financial aid, while President Biden announced a $800 million military package to Ukraine.
You should be able to read it in the modlog still.