Speaking to an interviewer from Russian state media channel Россия 1, Col. Gen. Mordvichev says the quiet part out loud regarding the broader goals of Russian policy: namely that the ambition of conquering Ukraine is only a stepping stone to attacking the rest of Eastern Europe, a course of action which he presents as a necessity (“we will have to attack”).
I would opine that statements like these, brazenly uttered to domestic mass media by a senior military figure, are indicative of the realities of Russian ambitions: to revive Russian imperial domination of Eastern Europe by force of arms.
It seems implausible in the short term, but if statements like these are in any way reflective of long term strategic goals, or even official rhetoric, it’s still ominous. Of course, given the fact it’s state TV, it could be the General purely reciting the party line to give the public the impression that the war is going vastly better than it really is. But it also reminds me of what were purported to be strategic planning documents leaked by FSB sources early in the war, from when Russia still believed they’d take Kyiv in three days. It described a plan to conquer the country in weeks, then present their army on the Polish border as a fait accompli and declare a no-fly zone over the Baltics as an ultimatum to NATO.
Whether that’s true or not, subsequent events showed that the ZSRF was incapable of even that plan, as you say. But the very level of disparity between nominal and actual capabilities that led Moscow to believe such a thing was possible to begin with certainly doesn’t speak to their ability to make accurate estimations of what their forces are capable of.
The way I see it is that the real problem is that they wanted to. Normal people don’t want to kill their neighbors and take their things, even if they could. This also applies to most countries. The fact that the Russians are thinking about invading other European countries is a problem by itself.