The Same War, on Both Sides

In more than 55 of Russia's 83 regions, drivers now wait in lines at gas stations where fuel is rationed. In some places, the waiting has turned violent. The International Energy Agency assessed the disruption last month in terms without precedent.

This level of disruption is unprecedented in the history of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. — International Energy Agency

Eight hundred kilometers to the west, in Lviv, roughly 200 civilians surrounded a military recruitment vehicle on July 8, attacked the officers inside, and overturned it. Ukraine's human rights commissioner described what the incident revealed.

Many questions about Lviv, yesterday’s situation, the attack on the TCC servicemen. In my opinion, this situation is very bad. And the attitude towards people in military uniform is very bad. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

These are not two different crises. They are the same war, waged the same way, cracking both societies at once. The convergence has been building for months, but it hardened into doctrine in July. Zelenskyy made the strategic logic explicit.

The war is ongoing, but the front line is no longer moving. When the front line is almost not moving, and the enemy cannot invade by sea, the sky remains. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

On July 10, he established a Long-Range Impact Command by decree, with a single instruction.

Today, I signed a decree establishing a special command within the Armed Forces – a command aimed at a long-range and, in effect, global impact on Russia in response to this war. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Russia answered the same week. In a single seven-day span, Russian forces deployed approximately 1,400 drones, 1,500 guided bombs, and 19 missiles across 15 Ukrainian regions, targeting Naftogaz production facilities alongside residential areas ^[1].

The enemy attack caused extensive destruction to the city's civilian infrastructure. — State Emergency Service of Ukraine

Ukraine's target set, meanwhile, has expanded well beyond refineries. Ukrainian drones have now disabled roughly one-third of Russia's refining capacity ^[2], forcing the world's third-largest oil producer to import gasoline from India, jet fuel from Japan, and diesel from Belarus ^[3][4]. But the campaign no longer stops at energy infrastructure. FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles struck the Titan-Barrikady weapons plant in Volgograd, which produces artillery and Oreshnik missile components. Zelenskyy declared the new scope without ambiguity.

Last night, FP-5 Flamingo missiles successfully struck the Titan-Barrikady facility in Volgograd. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

And this week, a UAV struck a Wildberries logistics center in Kotovsk, a commercial facility with no direct military function, killing seven night-shift employees ^[5].

Seven night-shift employees were killed when enemy UAVs hit a Wildberries logistics centre... — Evgeny Pervyshov

Russia's reciprocal campaign has been equally indiscriminate. On July 10 and 11, Russian forces dropped seven FAB-250 guided bombs on Kramatorsk and struck a Sumy transit stop, killing four civilians waiting for a bus ^[6].

today, around 15:00, the Russians dropped seven aerial bombs on Kramatorsk and Bilenke. — Vadym Filashkin

The mirroring is now near-total: each side targets the other's economic foundation, each side absorbs the blow and retaliates, and each side's population is beginning to buckle. On the Russian side, the strain is measurable. Putin's approval rating has fallen to 73.3 percent, the lowest since 2022 ^[7].

a certain deficit — Vladimir Putin

Gasoline output has dropped to roughly 65 percent of capacity, Deputy Prime Minister Novak imposed a temporary ban on gasoline and diesel exports through July 31, and Russia is drawing on strategic reserves while importing fuel through third-party traders ^[8]. Sberbank CEO German Gref, one of the most senior figures in Russia's business elite, broke from the official line.

I don't think there's a single person who isn't concerned about anything other than a rapid end of hostilities, that's clear — German Gref

The strain is also fracturing the relationship between Moscow and the regions. Ukrainian drones have now struck more than half of Russia's federal subjects, and provincial governors are increasingly vocal about a Kremlin that collects taxes but fails to provide protection ^[9]. On the Ukrainian side, the cracking is different in kind but equal in gravity. The Lviv riot was not an isolated event: attacks on military recruitment officers have risen from five in 2022 to more than 100 in 2026 ^[10]. Ukraine's military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, framed the stakes in existential terms.

If today you tear the clothes off and beat a serviceman of your own army, think about who will protect you tomorrow from an enemy army that will beat you and tear your clothes off in the same way. — Kyrylo Budanov

This week, Zelenskyy dismissed Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov in a cabinet reshuffle that triggered street protests in Kyiv and several other cities ^[11]. The war's management is now a live political question inside Ukraine, not merely a military one. And beneath the politics lies the human cost: Ukraine has registered over 40,000 DNA samples from unidentified bodies against 170,000 family samples, a forensic identification effort on an industrial scale ^[12].

Even if the war ends, we’ll still have a great deal of work. — Maksym Paziura

Two economies are grinding each other down. Two societies are showing the fractures. And yet the mutual destruction has produced no diplomatic off-ramp — because the two sides hold directly contradictory theories of how the pain is supposed to end. The United States has placed an explicit bet that economic attrition creates negotiation. At the NATO Ankara summit, Trump described Ukraine's energy-strike campaign in terms that made the theory plain.

It’s an escalation, but it’s also an escalation that can help lead to an end. — Donald Trump

Secretary of State Rubio went further, suggesting the strikes could produce a diplomatic opening.

create the space — Marco Rubio

The logic is straightforward: economic pain forces political concession. The problem is that the Kremlin has explicitly and repeatedly rejected that logic. When the US framed Ukrainian energy strikes as a path to peace, Peskov's response was direct.

Further escalation may prolong the special military operation to some extent. — Dmitry Peskov

The rejection is not tactical; it is theoretical. In June, when European powers proposed peace terms, Peskov dismissed them on the grounds that they assumed negotiation from a position of Russian weakness ^[13].

The Europeans have a very serious misconception: They assume that negotiations with Russia must be conducted from a position of strength and based on Russia's weakness. — Dmitry Peskov

Putin's answer to the economic-war campaign has not been concession but territorial expansion. He announced an expanded "security buffer zone" in eastern Ukraine and made the escalatory logic explicit.

The more attempts the enemy makes of this kind, the larger a security zone we’ll have to establish on the adjacent territory. — Vladimir Putin

He has also rejected Ukraine's proposal for a mutual halt to long-range strikes and reaffirmed the military goal of capturing all of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson ^[2]. The two sides are not merely far apart on terms. They hold directly contradictory theories of how the war ends: the US and Ukraine bet that economic attrition creates negotiation; the Kremlin treats economic attrition as a reason to escalate territorially. The same destruction is supposed to produce opposite outcomes. Former Ukrainian military commander Valeriy Zaluzhniy described the military balance in a phrase that captures the larger predicament.

Ballistic missile strikes are “Russia’s last major advantage” in the war. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Mutual denial: neither side can win a conventional victory, but both can keep destroying the other's economic foundation indefinitely. The question is what happens when the destruction produces political cracking on both sides but no diplomatic movement in either direction. Bill Browder has argued that Putin cannot make peace without losing power — that after sustaining roughly 1.2 million casualties, his survival depends on perpetual war, making the attrition strategy self-defeating ^[14]. Czech President Pavel has separately warned that Putin may declare general mobilization after Russia's September 20 parliamentary elections ^[14]. The mutual economic annihilation is real, measurable, and accelerating. The domestic political costs are accumulating on both sides. But the conversion mechanism — the thing that turns economic damage into diplomatic concession — does not exist. Two economies are grinding each other down, and neither leadership can survive the peace the other side's theory requires.