Pepe Escobar says Russian leadership and businessmen are pretty sure NATO intends to wage a full scale war on Russia, that their moves in Ukraine are a prelude, a means of weakening Russia first.  So Russian strategy has been with this in mind:  their rapid alliance with China, their conversion of their economy into building ammunition, their strategic escalations, all with the view that war with NATO is inevitable.  Most of them want to decapitate Ukraine and get it over with, so that proximal axis of war would be cut off and NATO would need to come up with a different excuse to go to war with Russia.  But Putin has been patient and hasn't taken such an action yet as far as we can tell, instead focusing on setting up meat grinders and winning by attrition.  A decapitation action that wasn't an assassination might take about 3-4 months (according to former leader Sergei) of attacking Kiev.