Russia's home front still works, but every external lever Moscow pulls now runs through another capital's tolerance. The gap between what Moscow still does alone and what needs permission is the widest of the war.
Russia now needs China more than China needs Russia. Beijing shapes Moscow's economic and military room to maneuver without owing anything back, and that hold reaches into Central Asia.
Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian oil export terminals is a durable interdiction capability, not symbolic retaliation. It forces Moscow into a standing trade-off between front-line air defense and protection of its fiscal base.
Orbán's defeat stripped Russia of its most reliable EU veto player, and Radev's Bulgaria cannot replace it. Coalition arithmetic and dependence on EU defense financing cap how far Sofia can dilute European consensus on Ukraine.
The operational North Korea partnership is Moscow's main external gain this window, but it buys wartime sustainment at the cost of deeper entanglement with a pariah client that is itself hedging toward Beijing. The renewed US oil waiver is a byproduct of Hormuz market stress, not Russian projection.
Since the March read, external pressure has paused at a lower level, but what sits underneath has hardened. China's hold on Russia's war economy is now openly visible, not implicit. Ukraine's oil-terminal campaign has matured from episodic reprisal into a repeatable way to hit revenue. Europe's pro-Moscow bench in Brussels has shrunk to one constrained capital: Orbán is gone, and Radev is boxed in by coalition math and EU financing before his government is even seated.
Plus content
The deeper assessment read opens with Plus.
Upgrade to unlock the full analysis, period review, indicators, outlook, and supporting receipts behind this assessment.
Related Assessments