Welcome to today’s Morning Jolt. This is Noah Rothman with you one last time before Jim Geraghty returns on Monday.

On the menu today: Moscow is feeling the squeeze as Russia’s war of conquest in Ukraine evolves into a deadly slog on the battlefield and with Ukrainian air power increasingly bringing the war home to the Kremlin’s doorstep.

But first, we hope you’ll consider contributing to NR’s “Defending America” fundraiser. If you support the work we do in championing America and its founding ideals, any contribution you can make would be immensely valuable.

With that, we turn to Russia’s torment.

Russia’s Energy Infrastructure Takes a Beating

Moscow had high hopes for this year’s spring offensive, but the Ukrainians dashed them. Kyiv’s soldiers not only blunted Russia’s offensives but, by June, also managed to recapture over 600 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory.

Russia has responded to its humiliation on the front lines by pummeling Ukraine’s cities from the air with a ferocity arguably unrivaled at any point in this especially gruesome war.

In late May, Russia fired a prolonged barrage of dozens of missiles and hundreds of drones at Kyiv that shook the city to its foundations. The bombardment even featured the use of intermediate-range, nuclear-capable Oreshnik missiles in what was likely a signal aimed at Ukraine’s Western sponsors. The attack left over 100 Ukrainian civilians dead or wounded, but neither the West nor the Ukrainians were deterred.

Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian cities continued this week. On Monday, Moscow again targeted Kyiv and other major population centers with hundreds of drones and rockets, killing at least eleven people and wounding scores more. In that attack, some Russian ordnance struck one of Kyiv’s “most sacred landmarks,” the eleventh-century monastery Pechersk Lavra.

“Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, more than six hundred churches have been damaged or destroyed across Ukraine,” the Atlantic Council reported in the wake of this attack. Its analysts note that this strike is also in keeping with Russia’s wartime strategy, in which the Kremlin “has also sought to suppress all forms of Christianity other than the Russian Orthodox Church in areas under Russian occupation, with dozens of religious leaders killed or subjected to human rights abuses including torture.”

At the outset of this war, Ukraine lacked the power-projection capabilities required to strike back at Russia. Today, Ukraine is a world leader in defensive technology. Kyiv is now capable of producing thousands of offensive drones indigenously each year, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is not afraid to use them.

The skies over Moscow darkened on Thursday as hundreds of Ukrainian drones rained down on Russia’s capital city as Kyiv mounted a sustained attack on local oil refineries. The strikes “ranked among the largest single-night long-range attacks undertaken by Kyiv since the war began more than four years ago,” ABC News reported.

The strikes were, Zelensky said, a proportionate response to Moscow’s attacks on civilians. Indeed, Ukraine’s retaliation was restrained insofar as its targets were limited to infrastructure that directly supports the Russian war machine. And why shouldn’t Russia expect reciprocity? “We do not want Ukraine to burn because of the enemy,” Zelensky said. “But if Ukraine burns, your Moscow will burn.”

Unlike Russia’s attacks, Ukraine’s attacks on Russian targets inside the Federation are not expressions of directionless violence for violence’s sake. “Our long-range sanctions are hitting Russian oil facilities, refineries, very, very effectively,” Zelensky said this week. “And Russia is already facing fuel shortages, and their federal budget revenues are falling significantly.”

He’s right about that.

Ukraine’s attacks on Russian energy infrastructure — its oil refineries, in particular — are creating severe “supply bottlenecks” for the country’s fuel consumers. “And this could just be the beginning,” Germany’s Deutsche Welle reported. “If drone attacks continue at their current intensity and damaged refineries are unable to return to normal operations, local shortages could escalate into a broader crisis.”

The strain that Ukraine’s attacks have put on Moscow’s energy economy has become highly visible to the average Russian citizen. In April, the Kremlin barred domestic energy producers from exporting any gasoline until at least July — a deadline that is likely to be extended. In addition, the Russian oil producer Tatneft has limited gasoline sales to 30 liters per person and diesel sales to 60 liters per person.

The country’s Telegraph social media service is alive with reports of fuel rationing. In the occupied Crimean Peninsula, there is no gasoline to be found — cratering the area’s tourism-dependent economy. And Ukraine’s regular strikes on the roads and bridges that link Crimea to the Russian mainland have cut off the prospect of overland resupply.

Even before Thursday’s drone attack on Moscow’s refineries, one energy industry analyst estimated that roughly one-third of Russia’s domestic refining capacity has been taken offline by Ukraine’s attacks. The situation is so dire that Russia — one of the world’s most prolific oil producers — has been reduced to importing gasoline from abroad.

“It will be shipped from Asia, one source said, without providing details on volumes or suppliers,” Reuters reported. And yet, this temporary stopgap is unlikely to relieve the pressure on the Russian economy, and the former Soviet Republics still in the Kremlin’s orbit — Belarus and Kazakhstan — lack “sufficient spare capacity to support Russia in the event of a deeper supply crisis.”

Russia’s acute fuel shortages are a “manageable” problem, according to the Moscow Times’ contributor Dmitry Nekrasov. At least, for now. Ukrainian strikes are unlikely, for example, to cause significant shortages of diesel fuel, which would create “disruptions” throughout the Russian economy.

“The situation with gasoline is fundamentally different,” Nekrasov conceded. Russia struggled to meet the petrol needs of its civilian population even before the war. Now, Moscow’s supplies are woefully insufficient to meet the nation’s needs, and Russia’s supply constraints will not abate anytime soon.

Nor are there any easy solutions to this crisis. Russia could liberalize its energy sector, Nekrasov contends. The Kremlin could reduce or eliminate oil industry subsidies and allow market pricing mechanisms to take over. But that would be painful in the short term as supplies collapse and prices skyrocket. It can also crash-course the development of alternative refining facilities deep within the Russian interior, but those would not come online for years.

Unmentioned in Nekrasov’s piece, however, is the simplest solution to Russia’s conundrum: Moscow could just end the war.

ADDENDUM: In a Thursday press conference at the White House, JD Vance attempted to sell the public on Donald Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran by claiming that the best parts of the deal . . . aren’t in it.

You see, the Iranians have “backchanneled” to the Americans all the concessions the president sought. Those stipulations just couldn’t be included in the MOU, lest the Iranians get cold feet. Like what? Apparently, like their openness to the destruction of their stockpile of enriched uranium, as well as an invasive inspections regime.

The vice president is asking the American people to “have a little bit of faith” in Trump, but it sounds like the White House is investing even more faith in the Iranian regime to live up to its oral agreements. In a line echoed by other administration officials, Vance said that the JCPOA-like secret annexes to the MOU represent “gentlemen’s agreements” between the U.S. and Iran.

Of all the insulting propositions that have been put to the American people during this debacle, the notion that there can be “gentlemen’s agreements” with an Islamist terrorist regime constitutionally committed to the destruction of the United States might be the most unpersuasive.