Says the shitmulti NeoNazi

Oh look its St Petesburg propaganda troll-station wannabe employee

The cities that the Russians actually sieged, were reduced to rubble. Kiev never lost its utilities, was never subjected to widespread bombing / shelling. A few sporadic shells, a few missiles, some minor fighting around distant suburbs, some strikes back and forth between missile systems. We had lots of footage of Russian armor and troops moving around outside the city uncontested, and footage of Ukrainians manning checkpoints all too trigger happy, but little direct fighting and no campaign of flattening the city. It wasn't a major offensive that invested the forces necessary to capture the city and failed. It was posturing, that staged their forces outside the city, and then backed down without either a storm or a siege. And I'm open minded as to what the thought process was behind that, but I think pretending that it was some great invasion of Kiev that was gloriously fought back in bitter combat is belied by the obvious differences between what happened in Kiev and cities the Russians actually attacked, like Mariupol, reduced to smoldering ruins.

If Russia had actually sent in all those troops and armor they were circling around the city, either the city would fall, or it would be a bloodbath of Ukrainians massacred, or a bloodbath on the order of the siege of stalingrad as they fought street by street. The Ukrainians were making a show of having children arm themselves with molotov cocktails, lets be glad they didn't get used.

Russia does not posses ability to siege cities of Kiev size. It kept taking unsustainable losses near Kiev, hoped for capitulation and parade neither of which happened.
As for the rest, russian military might exists only in the heads of westerners who never saw it first hand. Its an army which solely relies on numbers and quantity rather than quality, armed with 1960s tech.

Russia possesses the ability to turn Kiev into a pile of bricks and body parts. A ground assault, which may or may not have taken the city in time, would have been an intensely bloody affair if it was resisted in urban fighting. As we said some thousands pages ago in this thread, Kiev conspicuously had no fighting on video on its many streamers, never lost its utilities and services, was not turned into rubble, did not have Russian troops fighting a militia made of underequipped children. And that's for the better.

the Russian war machine could have easily taken Kyiv, at the cost of many lives. Good thing they didn't try.

One does not simply beat Russia in a war. France tried, failed. Germany tried, failed. Russia will keep building more tanks, more weapons, and keep sending more men as needed. Their war strategy is tried and true. They have a vast array of land to utilize freely for the war effort

Have you seen russian equipment and supplies ?
It doesn't have the logistics to maintain a siege against Kiev, nor enough mobile units that can stay operational enough to even get to Kiev and start all these great battles in your imagination.
Entire Kiev assault was based on the intelligence FSB provided that Ukraine will capitulate and give in into Moscow demands, they even flew Yanukovych in just in case it was needed for him "to come back as legitimate president"

For Kiev to lose utilities, and urban combat to actually take place russia has to actually be able to get their forces into Kiev. And thats where you fail to understand that Moscow has no such capability, its Kiev front was outstretched appendix that would be grinded down over time by Ukrainian forces, once it realized there will be no capitulation it attempted to use aviation to break through the defenses, suffered casualties of up to 10 planes a day and rising.

If it easily could of taken Kiev it would of done so, "at the cost of many lives" is obviously not easily, who would be doing the taking? The conscripts who where given rations for 3-5 days, told they are going on training and didn't have enough ammo to last even 2 days during full scale attack on Kiev?

Their war strategy is utter gutter, its world war 2 era strategy mixed with terrorist bombings of shopping moles/hospitals/schools etc.

You're right it wouldn't exactly be easy. They could do it but it would be egregious, and Russia doesn't know how to blitzkrieg so it would be a short siege.

Their strategy yeah is essentially the same, and is terrible for capturing a capital city and overthrowing the government.

But they have switched back to what they are good at, and are just grinding away gaining territory slowly as they advance