In his strategic interest he would let the West to continue throwing finances here.
Odessa is the biggest port in Ukraine. Controlling it (and Mykolaiv) will make Ukraine a land-locked country, in addition to providing Crimea with reliable access to electricity, water and supply routes (in addition to connecting Russia with Transnistria). These are only the rational reasons, but Putin apparently has fears and complexes that go beyond those.
He justifies Luhansk, Donbass and Crimea because of the 2014 revolution and they fact they were always culturally Russian.
Edit - I should also add that it's in Ukraine's interest to simply let these regions go. Prior to 2014, Ukrainian elections always flip-flopped between pro-Russian and pro-Western factions... Now that most of the pro-Russian support no longer votes in Ukrainian elections (due to being part of Russian or breakaway), Ukrainian politics are almost entire pro-Western.
As for angry citizens... for one thing, not all of those citizens will be angry, especially in central Ukraine. Not the majority, but enough to supply informants etc to keep the rest in check.
But also, why do you say that no-one in the modern era has attempted that? This exact thing happened during WW2 - or is that not sufficiently "modern"? And if not, then what makes the difference?
Saudi Arabia invading Yemen. Syria invading Lebanon is I think around the ⅓ mark. Iraq invading Iran--note that Iran was the larger country then. All of these are conflicts that were intended to induce suzerainty if not outright conquest, and all of these are undeniably in what you'd call the "modern era".
Although I'll note that "modern era" is usually given as since about ~1789, which means we can throw in all of the wonderful aggression conflicts that make up World War II, such as Germany attempting to incorporate the populated bits of the USSR into its own territory, after killing off the current inhabitants of course.
> they fact they were always culturally Russian.
IIRC, he claims that Ukrainians are themselves no different from Russians, which means this gives him casus belli to incorporate all of Ukraine on the same grounds.
> Why would Putin want to annex a country full of people who hate him?
Please change your optics. People never matter in Russia/Soviet Union. Even, if there will be 70-80% of people who are dreadful opponents to "new goverment" then what they would do? Take it to the street? Strike? Please remind yourself how it looked in the Kazakhstan in early January 2022 (you will get shot, just because you left your home to buy some food) and in Belarus 2021 (mass protests, thousands of people being thrown in jail for no reason, very often beaten, many found dead there). Coup d'état? Poor joke, especially if we look at the latest events in Africa (for example Mali), where armed Russia's Wagner forces helped to take over the whole country.
Edit: As a person who lives in Central Europe, your question made me sad, because it means western mass-media is crap these days - they cannot explain a very silly thing why this ongoing conflict for 8+ years takes place.
Reading the GP's other comments they're either a "useful idiot" (in KGB parlance) or a Russian-supporting astroturfer. There has been a lot of coverage of Russia's actions in Ukraine in "the West" for the past 8 years.
Because distracting people with a project to restore the greatness of Imperial Russia, repudiating the losses it suffered at the hands of hostile foreign powers (and even Soviet leaders—he’s blamed, e.g., Lenin for “creating” Ukraine from “Russian” territory and Stalin for giving Ukraine control of additional “Russian” territory) is Putin’s central political strategy right now, and he’s already laid out the public case for why Ukraine ought to be Russian on that basis.
These claims would suggest that Putin will stop at nothing short of total regime change in Kiev.
The absolute majority sans the single digit percentage of ethnic Russians hate Russia with passion.
And I am not even talking about ethnic Russians within Ukraine, but Russia itself.
Russian Far East very seriously wanted to seccede.
South Russians don't count themselves as the same ethnicity as Russians living in the Moscow at all.
People in Urals, besides attempting at Urals Republic in early nineties, are still very unhappy about Urals, and Western Siberia being the poorest part of Russia, while their resources allow Muscovites bathe in Champagne.
All other ethnic republics will secede in no time as well if given the opportunity.
Russia will be the next Yugoslavia. This is what we actually need to be talking about
Russia losing its oil/gas, or Putin getting assasinated, or just any major crisis = Yugo with nukes, and a civil war 10 times worse.
