On the first night of my recent trip to Russia, driving from the airport at around two in the morning, I passed a gas station just outside Moscow. A long line of cars and trucks snaked around it, waiting for their ration of 40 liters (about 10 gallons) of fuel. There was something surreal about watching drivers queue for fuel in the capital of one of the world’s largest oil-producing countries. For most of the past four years, the Russian capital existed in a kind of parallel reality—something I repeatedly observed on my semiannual trips back home. The war itself was confined mostly to TV, where it was packaged as a distant “special military operation,” conducted by soldiers somewhere far away.