That sort of is the strategy. Ukraine says they pick targets in Moscow and St. Petersburg that hurt Russia's elites. The trouble is that Russia's elites have little influence over Putin. He crushed that a decade ago.
The battlefront in Ukraine has been stuck for a year. People are dying, but nobody is winning. The front lines don't move much. Nobody really knows what to do. It's very WWI.
Did you know that during WW1, the front lines moves from far west of Ukraine to the far east, and then back again? This war isn't like that.
And it really isn't. Back then the front moved and it mattered. This isn't like that. Ukraine recently hit about 200 ships, not because the front moved and the ships came into range, but because they'd blown up all the defenses along a 200km-long path from the "front" to the ships, so they had free passage. That "front" means much less than in WW1.
Leaders of Russia who lose a war do not, historically, survive long.
Putin spends most of his time in bunkers now, terrified of both attacks from Ukraine and possible coup attempts from his own people.[1]
The battlefront in Ukraine has been stuck for a year. People are dying, but nobody is winning. The front lines don't move much. Nobody really knows what to do. It's very WWI.