Vladimir Putin finally said the quiet part out loud. On Sunday, the Russian President admitted that Ukraine’s relentless campaign against his country’s energy grid is actually working. It is causing “problems.” That is a rare concession from a man who usually pretends everything is going according to plan. He tried to downplay it, of course. He called the resulting fuel shortages “not critical.” Tell that to the people waiting in line.
Kyiv has been hammering Russian logistics. Very hard. Last week, they unleashed a massive drone swarm across 12 Russian regions and occupied Crimea. Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Mikhailo Fedorov, has a simple, brutal goal. Isolate Crimea. Turn it into an island. It is working. Crimean authorities just declared a state of emergency and cut off all fuel sales to civilians. No gas. No movement. Just panic.
Putin’s new priorities are clear: fix the fuel lines and stop the sky from falling. Good luck with that. Ukraine has been systematically hunting Russian air defenses. Moscow is running dangerously low on S-300 missile interceptors. Kyiv claims to have wrecked 1,454 air defense systems since the 2022 invasion, including seven over a single weekend. Putin wants factories to build more. Fast. But factories need parts, and Russia is running out of time.
Meanwhile, the Russian public is exhausted. A new poll by a Ukrainian think tank shows 81% of Russians want the war to end tomorrow. That is a record high. But the Kremlin does not care about polls. Putin recently laughed off a Ukrainian proposal to stop long-range strikes on each other’s territory. He claims Russia’s strikes are far more devastating. He thinks Kyiv is just begging for mercy because they are running out of soldiers. Saving Ukraine, Putin sneered, is not on his agenda.
