A shorter war and a less destroyed Russia… You probably see the issue.

You need fuel to drive a tank to the front line and that is a bit of a problem due to some smoking issues in Russia.

1.4million casualties…

In 2024 Russia was the fourth largest oil consumer after the US, China and India. So this is just great!

It is just crazy that Russian casualties are 1% of their entire population, not including the occupied parts of Ukraine.

The recruitment from Moscow is much lower. It is the richest city in the country, so they do not need the soldier contracts that badly and Putin does not want to piss them off. As in it is easier to storm the Kremlin, when you are in Moscow already.

To be fair, when the refineries close to me would be burning and I drove an ICE car, I would fill up too.

and this is were things start to get interesting. Russia is the largest country in the world and that means they need to transport everything over huge distances. With less diesel it is going to be hard to fuel trucks. So last mile delivery is going to become a problem. Not in Moscow of cause as it is the capital and will always be treated better, but we probably see empty shelves in far out villages soon.

The Soviets produced a lot of them and I doubt that they will be used in an air-to-air role due to being too short ranged. The advantage of them is that they have their own seeker, so even the Houthis managed to use them as a ground based air defence system, as they do not need radars or anything like that.

Ukraine said that Russia has had 27 operable Tu-22M left in 2023. They lost seven after that claim. Also the main factory working on bombers has been hit.

and 160km longer

and WW1 broke the Russian Empire. Also deaths of the Russian Empire were 1.6-1.9% of the total population. So it is getting to that point, which is kind of crazy.

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.