>>This is why they expected this to last seventy-two hours.

There are some interesting possibilities here. If you take that 72-hour expectation to be a real thing - and there's evidence for it (troops w dress uniforms, low rations, paratroops to an unsopported position near Kiev). It almost seems as though they were expecting help from RF-loyal Ukranian partisan groups.

Now... if you look at how many of the FSB were fired (top guy was jailed in a particularly unpleasant jail) and the possibility of corruption - and consider one way for those officers to get piles of roubles was to claim they were 'running' a partisan group in Ukraine and needed money to arm/support that group...

I'm just spitballing; it does fit what happened - and if it doesn't, someone will be along shortly to tell me how very wrong I am :-)