I don't see how the proposition that Russia wants to capture Kiev with that skeleton force is realistic. They say it was a fixing maneuver while they went into Donbass. Others think it was a tool for political pressure to advance Russian interests at the negotiation table.
They pulled away from Kiev a measure of goodwill
during the negotiations in Istanbul. Obviously, before Boris stepped in to order Zelensky to drop the negotiations and commit to war.
Lets look at some less recent analysis of how many troops are needed to occupy a city. Here's an article about the Iraq War:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/05/09/a-proven-formula-for-how-many-troops-we-need/5c6dbfc9-33f8-4648-bd07-40d244a1daa4/Quote
When Germany surrendered in May 1945, the U.S. Army had more than 1.6 million men within the borders of the defeated Nazi state. Overnight they became occupation troops: Their orders were to spread out over every square mile of German territory and demonstrate without a doubt that they were in charge. U.S. troops secured every road junction, bridge, border post, government building, factory, bank, warehouse; anything of the slightest conceivable importance had a guard of GIs around it, and so did a good many things of little or no importance, too.
Army plans called for an occupation force of some 400,000 in the American zone for the first 18 months -- or one U.S. soldier for every 40 Germans.
When NATO forces went into Kosovo in 1999, they followed the same proven formula: 50,000 troops for a population of 2 million, one soldier for every 40 inhabitants. A recent Rand Corp. study by military analyst James Quinlivan concluded that the bare minimum ratio to provide security for the inhabitants of an occupied territory, let alone deal with an active insurgency, is one to 50.
That longstanding doctrine would demand Russia bring
at least 55 thousand infantry to occupy Kiev.
So no, this idea that Russia was prepping to enter and occupy Kiev, let alone all the other parts of north and west Ukraine is patently ridiculous.