Have you taken a look at Russia on a map lately? Why would Russia need or want more land? More than anything else newly liberated regions are a massive financial burden on Russia. They would have required huge reconstruction efforts even without a war as they have been neglected for 30 years by the succession of kleptocratic, neoliberal, post-Soviet governments of Ukraine since 1991. Russia didn’t “take” Crimea, Crimeans voted to re-join Russia in a referendum after a fascist coup overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine and replaced it with an ultra-nationalist russophobic regime. Crimea being majority ethnically Russian feared having the same shit happen to them as happened in Odessa when the Nazis burned dozens of people alive for protesting the coup.

The notion that Putin simply decided to attack Ukraine one day because he wanted more land or just felt like conquering someone is incredibly childish, not to mention it requires that you purposely close your eyes to all of the actual real factors, all the events, all of the history that led up to the intervention, and all of the vital national interests and concerns that Russia had and which any government would have been compelled to act on.

If Putin just wanted land why wouldn’t he take it from say, Kazakhstan, which is far less supported by the West, has a much weaker military than Ukraine - which at the start of the conflict was the second strongest military in Europe - and whose mostly empty land is nowhere near as defensible as the highly urbanized and industrialized regions of eastern Ukraine and yet far more rich in natural resources?

And why did he spend eight years refusing to allow the Donbass republics to join Russia - something that the people living there were practically begging for since it became clear that they could no longer live in peace under the post-Maidan government of Ukraine - and instead insisting on trying to maintain the territorial integrity of Ukraine by entering into agreements like Minsk I and II?