Ukraine’s Long Shot

This summer, Ukraine began one of the most ambitious campaigns of its war with Russia.

It launched drones deep into Russian territory, hitting some of the country’s biggest oil refineries and causing a nationwide fuel shortage.

In some areas, Russians have waited for gas for as long as 69 hours , in lines stretching miles .

Impatient drivers have beaten and stabbed one another.

Even state-controlled media have acknowledged the problem.

Ukraine and its allies seemed to hope that frustrated Russians would rise up in protest.

After more than four years, the war had finally “ come home .” Now that more citizens were feeling its effects, one might assume, they would demand its end and apply pressure to President Vladimir Putin ahead of parliamentary elections in the fall.

But so far, no mass uprising appears likely, now or anytime soon.

Russians are used to inconveniences.

Under Soviet rule, they lived with shortages of just about everything.

Lines were so ubiquitous that academics theorized about Russian identity being shaped by waiting.

Books were published with chapter titles such as “The Queue as a Form of Soviet Life.” The newspaper Socialist Industry estimated that Soviet citizens spent 30 billion working hours a year waiting in line for essential goods.

In the late 1980s, at the peak of Soviet scarcity, my family lived on the outskirts of Gorky, a city east of Moscow.

Sometimes my mother would send me shopping.