A short thread on how war reporting can still be rather 19th century, and focused on winning battles and missing the winning of wars. To start the headlines of the New York Times this morning about Kherson 
The fact that Khorsen has been occupied (temporarily) by Russian forces will make little or no difference to the outcome of the war. Indeed the description of what is happening around Khorsen reveals the bankruptcy of Russian strategy.
After a week of fighting and suffering losses that I think we can all say are much heavier than they ever imagined: the Russians have some troops in the centre of Ukraine’s 15th largest city.
It will play almost no role in determining the outcome of this war. The stories that matter now are three fold. Ukrainian resistance remains very strong and indeed popular opinion is hardening and now expecting to win
The Ukrainian armed forces are being resupplies with the exact things needed to keep the Russians from controlling the air
Ukrainians are receiving more UAVs, more anti vehicle handheld weapons, etc, and the main Russian column heading to Kyiv is still inert.
And at the same time the Russian economy is about to implode. This thread is worth a read about this (thanks @AussieBenC )
https://twitter.com/mironov_fm/status/1499092871265361927
Russian ability to prosecute the war is being degraded effectively and there is no possible war winning strategy. Khorsen is a terrible story of suffering, but it tells us very little about how the war is developing
We need to move away from the early concept of looking at which side ‘holds the field’ at the end of the day as indicating victory, to one about who actually is improving their chances of achieving their preferred political result
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