Do they have big port facilities there? Seems to me the Mariupol ports are the focus right now (still!). I have read others' interpretations that suggest those ports are the grain shipping point. My glancing at maps doesn't mean much but it seems to me that Odessa is not a great place for a port into the big flatlands, anyway.

It's mostly just how the logistics happen to have turned out. Armies and battle theatres take a long time to move. And then there's the little thing where he believed the FSB's toadie intelligence [1] that he could take all of Ukraine in a day, 4 max.

Putin has decreed that there shall be a victory by Victory Day (May 9), and every redistribution of personnel or materiel causes massive delays, making any kind of victory by then even less likely. Their logistics and equipment maintenance is terrible, as is evidenced in their transportation and resupply effort [2]

There's also a lot of sunk cost fixation going on. He's already lost most of his prize, a hard pill to swallow. But every other bit of territorial potential he loses is infuriating. This is the RUSSIAN army, goddammit! A world class army! An empire army! And they WILL have a victory by May 9th if they know what's good for them.

So his generals continue to obey him, reinforcing damaged units with other damaged units as morale continues to plummet [3], trying desperately to coax the soldiers in Maruipol into surrendering so that they can call this their "victory" [4].

[1] https://www.igorsushko.com/2022/03/hits-about-to-hit-fan-bet...

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/14/europe/ukraine-war-russia...

[3] http://www.iswresearch.org/2022/04/russian-offensive-campaig...

[4] http://www.iswresearch.org/2022/04/russian-offensive-campaig...

Because at first he put most of his chips into Kyiv, and we know how that went.

Odessa was probably his secondary goal from the outset -- but his navy squicked, and then he got turned back at Mykolaiv.

Maybe he is not that interested in and fond of his 14th army, the one who took Transnistria from Moldova. Not that great of an ally, and why give them Odessa then.

Your question implies him being smart, which cant be far enough away from truth.

Putin's first objective is Dombass. Second is the channel from Russia to Crimea. Third is Azov sea control, which they thought it could be done just by encircling Odessa with warships. The channel to Transnistria is not vital.

Logistics - too far away from the USRR border.

Putin doesn't wanna intervene with Ukraine's exports, specially wheat. He doesn't wanna stop Ukraine from exporting to "friendly countries".

Because he is occupied elsewhere?