ANOTHER 740 casualties? How many days of similar figures in a row is that? It's like every day Russia deliberately sends a thousand troops into the meat grinder.

It has been called "Battle hardening" forever, or realistically could be called "Weeding out the weak". Happens in every war. A certain percentage of soldiers simply die (stupidity, inexperience, mental breakdowns, etc.). With likely over 350k people pressed into service, Putin and his cronies can easily lose 10-20% of them. After that he has around 250-300k soldiers that can fight. As long as the weeded out mainly consist of village idiots from the provinces, and not citizens of major towns, noone will care in mainland Russia, certainly not Putin and his cronies.

The logic is insane, but it is logic that always works in a totalitarian state.

This is what I think will be next for Ukraine.
Kherson will now be a pretty strong position but unsuitable for further progress. So Kherson manpower will be left at a minimum with the blunt of the force being sent to other fronts. From there I see 3 possibilities.

1. They try to progress south of Zaporizhzhia with Vasylivka and Tokmak being their first 2 targets before going west and pushing Russia out of the other side of the Dnipro while being supported by artillery from the north.
   1. The up side 
      • They'll open up the possibility to free the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear power plant and alleviate some of their energy crysis.
      • Russia might need to strengthen the region with low moral troops from Kherson preventing large swats of them to reach other fronts in the donetsk and luhansk regions.
   2. The down side
      • they will need to progress widely as to not get themselves surrounded and pushed against the Dnipro in a possible Russian successful counter attack. 
2. They reinforce the northern luhansk front and try to accelerate progress there
   1. The up side 
      • Logistics are pretty much in place and working in this area. 
      • New of large loss in the Luhansk should keep Putin presidency shaking. 
   2. The down side
      • they would only have 1 active front and Russians resource from Kherson might be reaffected pretty much everywhere.
3.  They strengthen the Donetsk defensive line.
   1. The up side 
      • they prevent any Russians progress where they've been trying for months. 
   2. The down side
      • Russian endure extremes loss in the region, Ukraine might want Russia to keep up their attempts which are mostly unsuccessful and costly. 

The obvious next step is securing the dams upstream. If and as long as they are mined, this is the primary goal. Then they can think of cutting off water supply to the Crimea (which apparently is being heavily fortified now).

As winter arrives, the war will become static.

Yes, for sure, Kherson itself would be mined as hell and will need extensive demining works. I was more focus on troops movement and liberation target with my previous post. Winter sure will slow down things but Ukraine still need to set new targets even though those might need to wait for spring to be capitalized on.