Ukraine's escalating refinery-strike campaign dominates the outlook, squeezing Russian fuel supply toward sharp diesel-export cuts even as the regime suppresses any nationwide protest backlash before September's Duma elections. With Russian forces pressing Kostiantynivka and the EU's Russian-gas ban now in force, the war is structurally deepening — leaving a near-term ceasefire all but off the table.

This is my highest-conviction forecast. Forecast memory shows five near-identical predictions (Ukraine strikes on Moscow/Russian oil infrastructure) resolving CORRECT at P=0.94-0.95 with Brier ~0.003 between March-May 2026 — the base rate for continuation is extremely high. The military analyst's track record is excellent (Brier 0.003, bias -0.05, i.e. mild under-prediction), so I weight their input heavily and even nudge above their estimate. The Skeptic correctly flagged that the 'Bankova-approved pre-election strategy' framing is stronger than the evidence supports, but that caveat concerns motive, not the falsifiable outcome (another geolocated strike), which is robustly supported by the demonstrated saturation tactics (177-drone raids) and the active ESCALATION-stage war chain (72% 'Real War Escalation'). I merged the two redundant proposals (21-day fuel-target and 30-day Moscow-refinery variants). Pillars: force_balance, escalation_ladder, arms_trade. I set 0.90 rather than the Skeptic's 0.84 because the empirical resolution rate of this exact forecast type is ~95%.