The fact that the Russians have to transport grain from Ukraine to the Baltic Sea, shows just how badly they loose the naval war in the Black Sea.

Putin has signed the Minsk agreements, when he believed that the war in Ukraine was becoming too hot. Then he believed Western aid would stop and he could just force Ukraine into a peace deal or take all of it. He might still believe that. However there are a few issues with that. Namely Ukraine can survive(not win) without Western aid and in a stronger form the longer this goes on. So Ukraine does not need a cheap peace deal, which they believe to be just a ceasefire(for good reason).

But I am not sure, if Putin knows. He has been hiding for some time now and most of this is not that obvious, if you only get your news from your yes-men.

This is the first thing they cut. Probably the next thing to come will be jet fuel shortages in small regional airports. Then you would see shortages in the larger city and only after that they will start to military operations.

However this is still great news, as jet fuel is in short supply due to the Hormuz situation. So this means a lot less money for Russia.

If it can find and approach the balloon close enough to set off a grenade,

That is the problem. Weather balloons usually fly between 18-37km above sea level. That is hard to impossible to reach for even a fighter jet, which have service ceilings of 18km. Simpler cheaper aircraft can not fly that high. With the guns range being somewhat limited, you basically need to fire a missile at the balloon. That however is too expensive.

This is currently mostly just shaping. As in Ukraine really destroys some refineries and other infrastructure, so they are nearly impossible to fix. Then in half a year, when the winter arrives, they can hit all the other infrastructure at the same time so, Russia needs to shut down wells and those wells then freeze.

The actual rule is supposed to be forcing companies to have at least three different suppliers with a max share of 40% of supply for one. Hence if one be it China or the US cuts supply to the EU, they still have at least 60% coming from somewhere else.

Stop in the name of the United Fruit Company!

In every decent country, they would stop traffic over that bridge.

It is actually worse. Two Admiral Grigorovich class frigate have been heavily damaged by Ukraine. So Russia only has four undamaged blue water capable commissioned ships, which have not been laid down by the Soviet Union.

Also 650,000-1,300,000 Russians have left Russia, since the full scale invasion started. Add to that fewer migrants moving to Russia and you have another massive issue for the country.

The other big potential one, is that most quote the Russian statistics on them. However those include parts of Ukraine. The population of Russia would shrink by millions, if those go back to Ukraine.

There are 232 days left this year. That would mean 2827 casualties per day. I doubt this is going to happen this year. Still a lot of dead and seriously wounded.

Really important for Germany, since the US just cut off the sale of Tomahawk.

Drones are just another form of ammunition in this case. Dropping something like a torpedo from the air against some ship makes sense, as damaging a ship underwater is obviously a good idea. That is hard to do if you attack from above. Launching flying drones from a drone boat also is sensible, as it allows you to attack land targets. In the case of Ukraine it also allows different directions of attack. Land to water is really not a good idea, as you need to drive to the coast and then also need deep enough water to actually have the water-based drone be able to swim.

Ukraine is launching air based drones from water based drones.

Honestly they should attack air defence.

No need to wait, when you can just watch the last one. Notice the lack of a driver too.

Omsk was last hit 26.0.8.2024, Moscow 11.03.2025 and Taneco 11.01.2025. The largest ones also have multiple production lines. So they can still operate, but at reduced capacity. Ukraine should try to shut down as much refinery capacity as possible and export. So Russia has to close oil wells and has fuel shortages. The country is massive after all, so it takes a lot to transport fuel throughout it.

The main issue, are the non Russian state leaders. If the Chinese believe you attacked Xi for example.

If you kill Putin, that would bring in a new leader. It is hard to say who exactly and more so what he will do. That might be nuking Ukraine, but also making a peace deal, to bring in Western money.

Last year Xi was watching the parade. Attacking him was certainly problematic. That is still a problem, but with other leaders. So you would need a precise attack with a long range weapon. I believe 2024 Ukraine was unable to do that(except Storm Shadow, but they did not control that).

We might see it this year. After all soldiers are a military target.

Refineries hit over a year ago, will probably be repaired though. Ukraine needs to hit them more frequently.