I’ve been seeing a few details coming out from this about gas pipelines being a big reason for a push into this particular region of Russia. But things I haven’t seen talked about are things like this will cause Russia to have to spread troops thinner from the eastern fronts to handle this incursion. It’s also far enough away from Belarus that they don’t need to worry about any collateral damage. And most importantly, it’s in the general direction of Moscow so it cranks things up a notch in terms of proximity to the general population.