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…