We did see Russian 203 and 240mm artillery pieces going west on an earlier post. Russia probably sending more divisions to Ukraine.
They actually can if they go full dictatorship.
Ukrainians will just protest anyway so he thinks the bombardment will make them reconsider protesting if they survived.
I suspect they want to lure in as many as possible and then they will cut off.
Putin already knows they are not going to fold easily, what I assume he will do is do siege warfare and kill as many as those people as possible. Which kind of worked in Chechnya and Syria, even if they ran away into the forest he will just mobilized more troops, trap them inside the forest and...