Warum ist es Putin so wichtig, den Rest der Region Donezk einzunehmen?

Tl;dr it is symbolic to show the populace they’re « winners! »
My take: I agree, it’s just a talking point and the goalpost will be moved as soon as it is convenient. russia will not stop until the total destruction of Ukraine and Ukrainians.

TL; DR The idea is that Russia needs to walk away having acquired something in peace negotiations that they couldn’t acquire by force. That is how you show the people back home that you won the war.

The New York Times of course pitches this as a totally reasonable notion that only those die-hard Ukrainians won’t accept for some emotional reason or another. Implicit in their unsurprising foregone conclusion is the baked-in notion that Russia always wins in the end, so why keep fighting it? From that point of view, it seems savvy and world-wise to accept the need to haggle and concede a few things in order to achieve an end to this annoyingly unresolved news story, so the Times can get on with its usual task of scolding Americans for not being conciliatory enough toward Putin’s servants in their own country.

That is a mission they are far more eager to fulfill, this Ukraine thing has been getting unpleasant and confusing.

And their confusion over at the Times is understandable. Somehow, by some means, regular Ukrainians without immense wealth or power have successfully fended off Russian inevitability for 4 years, defying every single canard of grade-school geopolitics that the editors at the Times ever learned. It is quite unsettling! And threatens to become more so if Putin actually falls because of his folly in Ukraine. What does that say about power elites in general? It could catch on!

He wants it all and if he gets the defensive line for free he can try again in a couple of months with a big advantage.