Putin's declared war aims come up in Matt of WilliOAM's videos. These were declared in 2022 April when the units of RuAF withdrew from northern Ukraine, while Putin stated that they were successfully did their job. So the goals what he mentioned are: demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine. Matt recurringly says these are not very concrete goals.
I think Putin made a joke out of the world with them. War is essentially the process of demilitarization.
Here's how Clausewitz defined war in his signature work, On War. Chapter I. What is War?
2. DEFINITION.
We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of War used by publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale. If we would conceive as a unit the countless number of duels which make up a War, we shall do so best by supposing to ourselves two wrestlers. Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will: each endeavours to throw his adversary, and thus render him incapable of further resistance.
WAR THEREFORE IS AN ACT OF VIOLENCE INTENDED TO COMPEL OUR OPPONENT TO FULFIL OUR WILL.
Violence arms itself with the inventions of Art and Science in order to contend against violence. Self-imposed restrictions, almost imperceptible and hardly worth mentioning, termed usages of International Law, accompany it without essentially impairing its power. Violence, that is to say, physical force (for there is no moral force without the conception of States and Law), is therefore the MEANS; the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will is the ultimate object. In order to attain this object fully, the enemy must be disarmed, and disarmament becomes therefore the immediate OBJECT of hostilities in theory. It takes the place of the final object, and puts it aside as something we can eliminate from our calculations.
So the goal of the war is forcing our will onto the enemy. And to to achieve that:
>the enemy must be disarmed, and disarmament becomes therefore the immediate OBJECT of hostilities in theory.
Disarmament is demilitarization.