It's unfortunate, but understandable. Fear of death is a powerful motivator. That's why tyrants resort to it so frequently.
More and more news makes it sound like Russian conscripts get better treatment in Ukraine's POW camps than they do in the Russian military. Hopefully, more and more of them can find ways to lay down arms and exit the conflict to safety.
You're right, it's not, but it's what the Russians have. Keep in mind that the Black Sea is basically an oversized brackish lake, but is really important to the Russians because it has warm water ports. Russians love warm water ports. They also can get things into the Mediterranean from there, but they're bottle necked at either Gibraltar or Suez for getting out into the world's oceans.
Just looking at what they have in the Black Sea, they have no ships over 10k tons displacement since the Moskva sank. There's 5 ships around 5k tons, then 12 missile corvettes of 500 to 800 tons (one of which is the Askold mentioned in OP, and it was at the higher end of that range). The rest of the combat ships are things like submarines, landing craft, anti-submarine patrol, and a few others that aren't really relevant against Ukraine.
Considering what's left there, this is big, if not major. It was the biggest of their missile boats, and limits how many cruise missiles Russia can lob into Ukraine on any given day.
Have they lost? Unfortunately no, they're going to throw death and suffering at this conflict they started until they get what they want or they (somehow) run out of bodies to throw.
Imagine Vietnam-era US, but it was willing to sacrifice every warm body within its borders to win.
Like the US, I think Russia is on a collision course with failure. But they're going to take it a lot farther before waving a white flag. So much so that it will take the country decades to recover.
And Ukraine won't be looking too hot at that point anymore, either.