When it comes to the Kherson 'withdrawal', I have serious misgivings and see it as a potential Trojan Horse in that it is not at all what it appears to be.
My reasoning, such as it is, is that the Russians want to destroy the UKR military and they have thus far failed to do so. They have then attacked civilians in a fit of rage founded in their own incompetence and weakness - Russia really is a piece of sh!t country with a 3rd world military capability and staggeringly incompetent leaders. Whatever they hoped to achieve by attacking civilian targets has clearly failed - the hatred of Russia and the desire to defeat them is stronger than ever amongst both UKR and it's myriad allies - Putin has quite literally destroyed Russia as it must now be crushed in insignificance for the world to be able to move on..
Russia knows that if it does not defeat the UKR military then is doomed to lose this war (Russia losing is inevitable as the West simply cannot afford any other outcome). So...how does Russia target the UKR military it has so comprehensively failed to beat so far? How about this...'withdraw' from Kherson, knowing that the people moving in will be troops, not civilians. When the city is full of UKR soldiers, then strike. The strike could be massive conventional, but I think not. Given the call for civilians to leave (people Russia considers 'theirs'), I think a massive Chemical attack might be on the cards and fots Russia's playbook - an attempt to really degrade the UKR military whilst appearing to minimize civilian casualties. This is a very over-simplified idea, but Putin is a psychoticially insane narcissist and he thinks like a 6 year old playing with toy soldiers.
We are still just dancing around handbags and waiting for the real party to start - it is absolutely inevitable* that NATO will end up in a full-scale war with Russia. NATO knows this, and is using UKR to degrade Russia as much as possible before that happens.
* If Putin is assassinated, then maybe there is hope for something other than WWIII
I wish there was a single NATO leader with a pair of balls.