That's his pattern. He then will declare that Kyiv has fallen and will install a puppet gov't. But it will never last because any territory he has taken will (as with Kherson) constantly be contested.

Putin - who lives in a kleptocratic bubble - gravely miscalculated the response from the West and from the Ukrainians themselves. He believed that the Western response would be meek/timid like it was when he annexed Crimea. He believed that many Ukrainians would accept him as a liberator.