Retreating from Kherson was the right decision:

Overall, I think moving and memorable songs are more likely to be vocal pieces than instrumentals, so I'm always on the lookout for sub-par instrumental songs in my 5-star hall of fame that could be replaced by more vocalists.  Today I demoted Cerobi Steppe and Royal Palace, from FF 12 and FF 5 respectively, in favor of Prophecy by Mami Kawada from Shakugan no Shana and Chance Day, Chance Way by Liella! from Love Live! Superstar!.

Cerobi Steppe is kind of meandering, it has a melody but no rhythm.  Royal Palace, on the other hand, has too strong a rhythm with a loud drum and a simplistic repetitive theme.  If you're going to be an instrumental you need to be exquisite to compete with the female voice and these songs aren't.

Both Prophecy and Chance Day are songs I only discovered this year, so the new blood is getting ever stronger in my 5-star list.

Retreat is always a good idea when you are cut off from resupply.  Once Ukraine, using American supplied HIMARS, took out all the bridges leading into Kherson, the Russian forces located on that side of the river were untenable.  Russia should have used more troops early in the war, before HIMARS were provided to Ukraine.  If they had, they could have easily taken Nykolaiv and Odessa, pushing Ukraine so far away from the bridges over the Dnipro river that even HIMARS could no longer threaten their position.  But it's too late for hypotheticals like that.  As things stood Russia had to retreat, and they did so in good order, leaving no men or equipment behind.  That's a great success.  Now they have the giant Dnipro river as a barrier on their side instead of acting against them, which will make their defense of the rest of Kherson district extremely easy.  Russia can now concentrate on its main, original goal, which is to take back Donetsk and most of all push Ukrainian artillery away from Donetsk city so no further civilians can be killed by Ukraine's sadistic, genocidal, indiscriminate shelling.  That's all I ever wanted the war to do in the first place.

Any Russian sympathizing civilians located on the wrong side of the Dnipro river were given weeks to evacuate and free housing anywhere in Russia so nobody was left behind.  Compare this to the retreat of American forces from Kabul and you can see how masterful Russia was in comparison.

I finished my rewatch of Hataraku Maou-sama S2.  This keeps it qualified as a great series, so a job well done.  The sad thing is, I read the entire book series on the basis that 'it's a great series so I should read it.'  And now I'm stuck rewatching the anime because 'it's a great anime so I should rewatch it.'  But the only part of the series I really liked was the beginning.  The first season.  I feel like I've been roped into a much larger investment than I originally planned.  And now there's a third season coming which I'll have to rewatch too. >.<.