The Writing Maven

Moscow is hitting Ukraine's grid before winter and leaning on discounted oil to keep the cash flowing. But every weapon it picks up is turning into a liability. I keep coming back to the timing. You don't hit power plants and substations in October and November because that's when they're most vulnerable militarily. You hit them then because that's when it hurts ordinary people the most. No heat. No water. No elevators. Hospitals running on generators. It's not really a battlefield tactic. It's a bet. A bet that Ukrainians will get tired and Europeans will get squeamish before Moscow runs out of men and money and missiles. And the oil side is the same logic. Russia can't outproduce the West. It can't out-bank it. So it does the next best thing — it keeps the crude flowing to India, China, Turkey, anyone who will take a discount, through this shadow fleet and this maze of middlemen that are hard to track and harder to sanction. The point isn't to ...