Russia is burning, but don’t expect Putin to blink | CNN

On the streets of Moscow, disgruntled drivers wait patiently for gasoline in a long line of cars and trucks amid an acute national shortage. Many have spent the entire day, they tell CNN, driving around in search of fuel — extraordinary in the capital of one of the world’s biggest energy producers and unexpected in a city that has long been kept insulated from the effects of the Ukraine war. But now, for the first time in a conflict that is in its fifth year, the stark reality of what the Kremlin still insists on calling a “special military operation” has become impossible for ordinary Russians to comfortably ignore. In the past month, Ukraine’s unprecedented drone campaign has been extraordinary in scale and impact. On a single night last week, Russia reported intercepting 660 drones across 12 regions — one of the largest Ukrainian attacks since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. The targets, far from random, are carefully selected: refineries, oil terminals, naval vessels, weapons plants deep inside Russian territory. It is a campaign designed to bleed the Russian war economy, raising the economic and political costs to the Kremlin of further prosecuting