On waiting – Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz:

‘Biden is sticking to his decision not to intervene militarily in Ukraine. Instead he has chosen to present publicly all that his administration knows about Russia’s alleged plans, in an attempt to deny them any legitimacy and pressure them to stick with diplomacy.
The Kremlin’s denials are immaterial. Biden’s credibility is greater than Putin’s and the massive deployment of Russian forces on Ukraine’s borders seems to confirm that a large-scale invasion is imminent. However, there are logical flaws in Biden’s narrative as well.
If Russia is indeed determined to invade and occupy Ukraine, why has it waited so long? It has had enough battalions in the staging areas for the past month. Every day that passes not only erodes any element of surprise but gives Ukraine more time to prepare its army, and civilians, for a bitter war of defense, as new shipments of arms arrive in an airlift from the West. This will not be sufficient to block the far superior Russian army, but every additional anti-tank missile could mean more dead Russian troops.’

(…)

‘Both the Russian and U.S. narratives fail to take the sovereign government in Kyiv and the will of Ukraine’s people into account. The Western perspective of the Ukrainian crisis is now that of a potential world war. But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government will be toppled by much less. Even if Russia embarks on just a small-scale invasion to consolidate its hold on the separatist enclaves in the east, Zelenskyy will face a cruel, almost impossible dilemma.’

Read the article here.

So that’s the answer why Putin is waiting so long, he doesn’t need a full war in order to topple Zelenskyy. He thinks that he can get Ukraine back under openly or less openly Russian control while playing a cat and mouse game with the West and Ukraine.