Alright, so yesterday on the 25th of March the Head of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Colonel General Sergei Rudskoy gave a speech. I actually found it, it was posted in English on the Russian militaries website, but I had to use an Austrian proxy to access it.

I'll post the link but others might not be able to access it so I will mention some key points, like anything in this war, take it with a grain of salt.
https://eng.mil.ru/en/special_operation/news/more.htm?id=12414735@egNews

So, they say the main goal of the 'special military operation' was to protect the people of Luhansk and Donetsk who they say were being genocided.

>There were two possible courses of action.
>The first is to limit the territory to only the DPR and the LPR within the administrative borders of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which is enshrined in the constitutions of the republics. But then we would be faced with constant feeding by the Ukrainian authorities of the grouping involved in the so-called joint force operation.
>Therefore, the second option was chosen, which provides for actions throughout the territory of Ukraine with the implementation of measures for its demilitarization and denazification.
>The course of the operation confirmed the validity of this decision.

They are saying that there plan was to cut of Ukrainian units and to destroy there fighting ability, which they say they have achieved.

>These actions are carried out with the aim of causing such damage to military infrastructure, equipment, personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the results of which allow not only to shackle their forces and do not give them the opportunity to strengthen their grouping in the Donbass, but also will not allow them to do so until the Russian army completely liberates the territories of the DPR and LPR.
>Initially, we did not plan to storm them in order to prevent destruction and minimize losses among personnel and civilians.
>And although we do not rule out such a possibility, however, as individual groups complete their tasks, and they are being solved successfully, our forces and means will concentrate on the main thing – the complete liberation of Donbass.