They’re asking the word ‘offset’ to carry a lot here. But i thought the bigger story here says a lot about the state of things for Russia in the late stage madness of this insane war.

Namely - suggesting that the eventual capture of a completely decimated industrial Donbas town of less than 3000 people somehow offsets the massie strategic collapse that is happening in the entire Crimean peninsula is truly absurd messaging, even for the Russians. Doubtful that any Russian with more than 3 brain cells would see this as good news compared to losing Crimea. But - in a sense, it’s good news to Ukriane if they are trying to sell that message.

Size and perspective matters, especialy in war. Some context. Kostiantynivka is a smaller (former) glass-manufacturing city about 90km north of Donetsk city. It used to have about 60k people, but is now down to a tiny fraction of that. It’s a tragedy for any Ukrainian cities to be lost and destoyed, just like Sieverodonetsk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Pokrovsk and others before it. Crimea, on the other hand, is 27,000 square kilometers and has a population of 2.5 million. Not to mention vital Black Sea access and the port of Sevastopol. All of it is becoming unusable to the Russians.

Hoping the destruction of a grim industrial town after years of fighting offsets the bad news in Crimea? War isn’t that sort of 1:1 transactional business. The loss of control in Crimea has virtually nothing to do with Kostiantynivka. It’s not an either-or situaiton, and if Russia is going to celebrate infesting the charred rubble of this small town as being the equivalent of literally losing control of Crimea…well, that’s certainly a choice.

The basic calculus of this war continues to tip in Ukraine’s favor. Russia is losing faaaaaaaaaar more than Ukraine is. Hubris, sunk cost fallacy and sheer brutality keeps the Russians moving forward, slowly, for now, and only in areas with the simplest logistics for them. There’ll come a time very quickly, where even with the depraved and cruel mentality of the Russian regime, that the price of detroying the next town over in the Donbas doesn’t offset having lost control of Crimea. Moreover - then what? None of the cities lost to and destroyed by the Russians has created any kind of strategic momentum for them. And there’s no certainty that they will be able to keep and rebuild these blasted piles of concrete dust, twisted rebar and charred brick into a prize that justified their losses.

Russia has long since passed the point where they should have stopped. At this point, this is simply industrial murder so that Pootz doesn’t have to face reality. If this is their messaging…then carry on, Ukraine. It’s laughable if they consider Kostiantynivka to be an acceptable offset to losing Crimea - they don’t really, but it’s where they find themselves. One hopes that the weight of the absurdity eventually dawns on them.