I’ve become a war addict

It is an almost unquestioned orthodoxy that war is hell, and that every needless death in a needless war diminishes our common stock of humanity. It’s curious, though, how we’re able to hold that conviction alongside a positively visceral excitement at watching the Ukrainian counter-offensive carve its way through the Kharkiv Oblast. Some 3,000 square kilometres have been recaptured: Ukrainian troops are moving through their own land at such a clip that they’ve made more progress in three days than the massed might of the Russian invaders have since April.

I’ve been eating it up. Haven’t you? The images of abandoned armour, the fuel dumps, the sullen faces of Russian commanders rounded up as prisoners of war. Those lines and arrows on the maps, telling us that this bridge has been destroyed, that weapons dump annihilated, that pocket of troops encircled and stranded on the wrong side of the river, this pocket of troops routed and running leaving a trail of plundered white goods in their wake.