Shoigu added that Russia could achieve its military goals with “consistent implementation of the measures in the action until 2025.”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin and allies like Shoigu have repeatedly stressed the need to keep Ukraine inside Russia’s sphere of influence, and to defeat what they describe as Ukraine’s “Nazi regime”.
even if they had, they had no means of holding it.
If they had enough it’s possible that other nations would have not bothered fighting to take it back. That’s more or less how they took Crimea in the first place, they were fortifying a position before most countries could react.