They came extremely close with the decpaitation attack. It worked back when the USSR invaded Czechslovakia. What they weren't expecting was effective resistance, so now it's no longer possible.

That's why RIA had an article announcing the successful taking of Ukraine ready and published it by mistake, right: https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...

Right? Right? Putin totally only planned a multi-year stalemate where he lost his best troops on a dash to capture Kyiv. Totally!

Such familiar words there - "Putin took upon himself the historic responsibility to solve the Ukrainian question"

I don't think they anticipated a Nazi/Imperial Japan style completely takeover

I believe their plan was to capture Kyiv and install puppet government, and have the military collapse into factions and unable to coordinate effectively as a conventional force. Paramilitary groups would break out (such as the Azov units, etc.) Ukraine would then degrade into civil war, especially along an east-west line.

But at least, it would be dysfunctional and unable to join EU or NATO. And they would be able to control enough to extract some value out of the country (e.g. natural resources). But they never really care about establishing peace and prosperity there.