At some point in the next few months, the war aim of Russia is going to shift from “winning” the war to stopping Ukraine from winning. And if that sounds confusing, the difference is that Russia is going to cease trying to take and hold territory and start trying to prevent Ukraine from getting past some arbitrary point so they can con the plebes into feeling some measure of “pride” that their sons died keeping some portion of Ukraine firmly under Russian control. Keeping control of Crimea is the big one, but just preventing Ukraine from pushing far enough eastward so that those regions are forced to surrender will also be seen as a “win” in Moscow.

You can already sort of see this shift beginning in the BS slung yesterday on Russian propaganda channels that failing to take Kyiv in the early days of the war was actually a “win” because occupying the whole country would be so much more expensive than just what they’ve managed to hold up to this point.