Strategically Significant

Is there any town in Ukraine that is not "strategically significant"? This reminds me of the days when every city in Iraq was "holy". 

At the same time as the Partition of Ireland, the largely Ukrainian Soviet elite put Luhansk, Donestsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson into the Ukrainian SSR against the will of their inhabitants. Faced with the prospect of Vladimir Putin or Volodymr Zelensky, the Wagner Group or the Azov Battalion, those inhabitants' descendants have opted for the monstrosity that spoke their language rather than for the monstrosity that was trying to stamp it out.

Perhaps not by the margins announced, although such voting figures are recorded in the Falkland Islands, which Argentina has not attacked in 40 years, and in Gibraltar, which Spain has not attacked since 1783. By the way, do look up why that was happening.

No one anywhere near the running of anything in Argentina or in Spain proposes to ban the use of English in the Falkland Islands or in Gibraltar, or to banish the existing residents, or to put them to the sword. Argentine and Spanish advances are nevertheless rebuffed by percentages of those residents in the high nineties, so the same to Zelensky from Novorossiya seems, if anything, surprisingly low.

But Lyman is not Lanchester, Lossiemouth, Llanelli or Limavady. You are not prepared to go to war over whether it should be in Russia or in Ukraine. Nor should you be. You are not prepared to starve or freeze to death in the dark over whether it should be in Russia or in Ukraine. Nor should you be. You cannot see why its apparent change of hands should be the lead item on your news. Nor should it be.