I don’t think the evidence necessarily supports such a clean, sequential story.
Minsk was never fully implemented by either side, and Russia repeatedly violated ceasefire, withdrawal, and monitoring provisions.
I think it does. Remember Poroshenko trying to implement the Minsk Accords back in 2016? What was the major obstacle? It was a combination of right-wing elements within the armed forces not cooperating (literally refusing to withdraw to the agreed upon lines), and the Ukrainian Rada being completely unwilling to make the constitutional amendments necessary. It meant that no matter what issues there are with maintaining the ceasefire and dealing with the monitoring provisions, it was not possible for Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine, to get his own country to fulfill the agreement. Now we have admissions made by actors involved in the Minsk Accords that the entire thing was negotiated in bad faith. And those things shouldn't come as a surprise. It was obvious from the start that Ukraine wasn't going to abide by those agreements. Remember Minsk 1.0? It required an exchange of territories, fairly minor ones. LNR forces withdrew checkpoints from a major highway, and Ukraine was supposed to hand over the Donetsk airport and the village of Shirokino. LNR forces pulled back, Ukraine openly refused to withdraw from either. It took rebel forces with Russian support attacking the positions to take what Ukraine was obligated to give. And remember Zelesnky trying to implement Minsk 2.0? He ran into similar problems. Ukraine as a nation-state was simply not willing to follow the agreement they signed regardless of other circumstances, and the collective west was unwilling to pressure them to do so in a meaningful way.
Of course Russia did enter the war expecting a rapid collapse of the Ukrainian government. However, from the first days Russia did push up from Crimea aiming at seizing Kherson and much of Zaporizhzhia. That at least suggests territorial control was an initial objective or, at minimum, a planned parallel fallback, not something adopted only after regime change failed.
It’s also worth noting that Russia had already demonstrated a willingness to revise borders well before 2022, as seen with Crimea and the recognition of DPR/LPR days before the invasion.
Russia pushed up from everywhere to seize everything. They went for Kiev, they even did a landing in Gostomel', and some Russian forces penetrated westward from there towards Zhitomyr (not reaching it though). They fully intended to topple the government and have control of the entire country, the way the US took control of Iraq, and the Soviets took Afghanistan, in one rapid push. However there's a big difference between seizing control and annexing the territory. The second part only came out in the summer of '22 when the war started to turn into a long war, and Russia wanted to put additional pressure on Ukraine as well as punish them for backing out of the Istanbul Accords and being clearly unwilling to settle the war politically in a way Russia would accept. On the flip side I'm sure the annexation was intended to provide some morale boosts at home. I'm sure this was one of the intended consequences. But I'm highly skeptical of the idea that Russia went into Ukraine in 2022 with the specific idea of annexing large chunks of Ukraine to Russia. I suspect that if Russia had toppled the government in '22, they would have put in a new one that recognized the independence of LNR and DNR breakaway regions, recognized Crimea as Russian, and set up a client state regime in the rest of Ukraine.
EDIT: The front line is moving. In the Seversk area Russian forces have firmly taken the heights west of town, Seversk is fully under Russian control, and south of Seversk Russian forces are expanding their control across the Bakhmutovka in the area of Vasyukovka, Pazovoe, and Svyato-Pokrovskoe. In Kupyansk Ukrainian forces continue to gain ground on the right shore, but the specifics of control remain murky and unclear. Russian forces are in a bad situation, and there's no clear way out. In Mirnograd, the pocket is collapsing, and it's just a matter of Russian forces conducting their sweeps and securing the remaining area. Lastly in eastern Zaporozhye Russian forces are firmly across the Gaychur in at least 4 different areas, and have takne the first locale on the right shore, the village of Peschanoe. Gulyaypole itself is mostly under Russian control, but Ukrainian forces hold the built-up city center, and the routes into it from the west, even while Russian forces try to flank them through the outskirts.
.
