Reading between the news headlines, I don't think Russia is actually retreating as much as the news articles are describing

There's a lot of headlines about how Russia is getting pushed out of the eastern villages of Ukraine, but it looks likely they are bringing their troops back to the Donbass region and accepting a slow frozen stalemate in that region.

Very likely they would have held the territory if they could, and they have taken heavy losses as they pulled back, but it doesn't seem likely they will be "driven out of Ukraine" as the news is implying.

What they seem to want to do is hold what's left of the port of Mariupol and bomb the last port of Odessa, to control the sea trade from Ukraine.