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Which is not a reflection of how ratios have changed since the war began, when the ratios were significantly more in the Russian favor.
For the purpose of attrition- which is the strategy of both sides- the 'lighter' armaments are considerably more important, particularly as the Russian strategy militarily relies on offensive victory, but the Ukrainian strategy relies on defensive atrition until Russia's production / refurbishment rates burn through the stockpiles.
The position on Russian cruise missiles isn't that they aren't using them, but their rate of usage. Russian precision munition usage rate dropped precipitously from the start of the war, when they burned through their operational and strategic stockpiles, and is now gated by their production rate.
Which, in turn, is why the Shahed drone imports were as significant as they were: the Russians accessed the Iranian production rate at a cost-premium. But the increase in Iranian-sourced or style drones did not make up for the volume or efficacy of the precision munitions previously expended, nor did they deliver upon the drain on air defense stockpiles that was expected to enable Russia to operate freely over Ukrainian airspace. Hence the Russian reliance on glide bomb kits, as opposed to more proximal drops.
What you've just described is the relevant catchup.
For the purpose of the attritional strategy / flow of the war, what matters isn't the absolute difference, but the relative difference. This is because Russian advances to date have been extremely dependent on massive artillery-overmatch ratios, often of 5-to-1 or higher. This has been the level of overmatch needed for the Russians to suppress Ukrainian artillery and positions in order to do offensives that- despite the artillery overmatch- been relatively costly for relatively marginal gains. Without those ratios, results were worse.
As Russia's degree of artillery advantage decreases, so does it's prospects for even it's slow advances. This is why we've seen this year the Russian adoption of things like golf cart-conveyance in light infantry rushes- this is the strategic window of opportunity before more munitions make those less feasible, and gains now matter most.
This matters because while Russia's artillery production would remain such to enable it's own defensive operations to counter Ukrainian pushes for some time, potentially freezing the line, freezing the line is a losing position for Russia as it's sustainment rate hinges on the stockpiles, without the prospects of compelling a military defeat.
(This doesn't address points such as South Korean or European artillery production beyond the US's own, or the Russian's counting ammo-refurbishment as production for time-limited production rate, or the value of other systems for efficacy of use.)
This is based on first-year data and regular media conflation of different energy-export products, as well as what sanctions actually did. In terms of sanctions, sanctions are unrelated to the year-1 energy cost spike, and over time have been significantly cutting the Russian income prospects, but not their ultimate access to market (with exception of natural gas as an over-time basis).
Russian natural gas exports, which are primarily by pipeline had the bumper profits in the first year due to market-shocks even before sanctions were levied. In short- the Russians pre-war arranged for the Europeans to have a natural gas shortage (by not filling gas storage tanks in the summer per normal practices), and the Europeans lacked the LNG-gas terminals to import natural gas at scale via sea routes due to the multi-decade reliance on pipelines. Sanctions didn't target gas pipeline imports, and now the russian natural gas prospects are cratering because the Europeans are disconnecting from the Russian-pipeline network and Russian natural gas exports are gated by their terminal export capacity, which is nowhere near enough to cover the pipeline loses. Europeans paid higher gas import prices to free themselves from the blackmail mechanism, and Gazprom is having bad prospects.
Russian (unrefined) oil is what sanctions have been designed to limit profits but keep going to markets. This is where sanctions are designed to make Russia sell at lower margins, and while Russian attempts at sanction-evasion are ocurring, these are implementing the design goal because Russia's partners can- and have been- demanding Russian concessions on prices / mediums of exchange as conditions of transaction. See here the Indian-Russia trade dispute, in which Russia wanted India to pay in Rubles (providing external capital inflow into the Russian economy), and ended up paying in Rupees (which are broadly non-usable outside of India itself).
Russian (refined) oil / gasoline sanctions have also been about reducing Russia income from the value-added processes of refining raw oil into specialized products. This is what you are often seeing in the news in pieces about 'Europe is buying Russian energy via India.' This is Russia selling alternatively the refined products at a risk-premium discount, which the recipient re-sales on the global/European markets for the arbitrage margins that aren't going to Russia, or Russia just sells the inputs for refinement to get something rather than nothing, while the recipient refinery gets the value-added margins.
I will just re-emphasize that when it comes to things like artillery production, it is the ratio that matters considerably more than who has more. Russia at a 3-to-1 artillery ratio is losing the war of attrition, because Russia needs considerably more than 3-to-1 ratios to maintain significant offensive gains while Ukraine doesn't need any sort of artillery advantage to inflict unsustainable loss rates on Russian equipment.
Add to that how the Russian production hinge on the conversion of significant but finite Soviet-era stockpiles and Russian throughput is a not an indefinite factor. It's not even a long-term advantage, as the western coalition still has many resources it hasn't even begun to meaningfully tap but which it has access to, such as the American boneyards, the pre-position stocks around the war, the South Korean ammo stockpiles, and so on. We may be talking years instead of months for the Russians to run out of cold war stocks, but at the same time we are talking years, not decades, and we aren't talking the same for the economic capabilities of the western coalition.
Ukraine doesn't need military parity with Russia in the near or medium term to win the war.
This gets into the abstract, but Russia's decision to keep spending bodies and money and stockpile isn't a force of nature, it's a policy choice that that depends on the pre-condition to afford it. If it can't be afforded, it won't, and no matter who had the military advantage beforehand, if Russia doesn't pay for the required inputs for an Army to continue functioning, it won't. There are any number of ways it could functionally collapse before literal resource starvation- coups, mutinies, negotiations, or just Putin dying of old age/other reasons and a change of leadership- but Russia's ability to wage war at an industrial scale requires it to have the industrial output to continue doing so, and when it no longer can, the only question is how it no longer does.
The issue / crux of the conflict continuing is that Russia's ability to continue doing so at its current rates is not, in fact, indefinite. Putin might be willing to continue reactivating Soviet stockpiles of tanks and APCs and artillery ammunition from now until the end of time, but he can only do so as long as those stockpiles exist. They are depleting at a rate at which the next US president could see their functional end, if said US president was willing and able to continue supporting Ukraine.
This is why the opposing strategies for the attritional conflict have evolved, with the Russians driving for a political end to the conflict in the near term, but the pro-Ukrainian coalition driving for an end of the Russian's ability to wage the conflict over the long-term. Putin doesn't just want a political change in the western governments to lead to negotiations in the near term- he needs it, because his expenditure rates aren't sustainable over the long term, but the western economic-industrial capacity support to Ukraine is.
This is why Putin has actually accelerated his loss rates this year for marginal territorial gains- not because these fundamentally change the military balance of power, but because they can shape the political narrative in the leadup for the hoped for change in political fortunes. Putin's strategy is basically hoping 'and then the enemy loses the will to fight / keep supporting Ukraine,' with near-term minor gains leading to the loss of political support for Ukraine.
Which may happen! But if it does, it can happen despite- or even because of- efforts to push Ukraine to military parity with Russia (i.e. due to high political costs for massive military aid without political buy in from opposition figures, such as Biden holding out for an endorsement of the last US aid package). And if it doesn't, his strategic loss is regardless of whether Ukraine is at parity, or 'only' half as strong, or a fifth. Unsustainable over time is unsustainable over time, to whatever that time is. More is better, but not required.
And the time limit on this is Russia's material capability to continue feeding the machine, versus the Europeans and Americans willingness to feed the Ukrainian resistance such that Russia has to keep feeding the machine.
We can test that theory trivially with tanks. Russia went in with 1700 and now as 3,500; Ukraine then had 1,000ish(?) and earlier this year was reported to have managed to maintain the number it had when the war began.
If light weapons (drones) are more important, Russia currently has a drone overmatch and it isn't drawing those down from Soviet stockpiles. (From what I can tell both sides are largely just buying from China, which is funny.)
So both in light and heavy weapons it appears Russia still has a 3:1 edge. If I had to guess their edge is much less extreme, possibly even negative, in frontline soldiers, but that hasn't stopped the Russian offensive. I'd be happy to see hard numbers on this, or contrarian takes. But from what I can tell the main Ukrainian advantage over time has been fielding (piecemeal) new Western systems like Storm Shadow, which are often effective (at least for at time) but are also limited in number.
Well, let's keep in mind that the Ukrainian's stated war aim is to regain Crimea. To achieve their war goal, they will need to constitute a very powerful offensive force. Which cuts back around to your overall point (which is well-taken) that Russia needs to maintain not just parity+ but an overmatch of capability in order to continue its offensive. And if that's true, it implies now that Ukraine needs a 3 - 1 advantage in order to win the war (as per their stated war aims.)
We tapped the South Korean stockpiles last year (.3 or .5 million rounds out of an estimated 3.4 million.) I agree that South Korea has a lot more, but I think that counts as a meaningful tap.
I don't understand US thinking on our boneyards, but as near as I can figure for some reason we don't want to tap them. Otherwise we would have sent more M1s.
I agree that this is true if "win the war" is taken to mean "preserving some degree of Ukrainian sovereignty or territory." As per your own statements above, though, I do think they need something like military parity at a minimum to achieve their stated war aims.
Now, I think it's easy to discount Ukrainian stated war aims as something they're never going to get – and that's fair enough! I also think it's quite plausible that (Trump or no Trump, NATO support or no NATO support, however you slice it) that Russia does not achieve all of its war aims. It's fairly typical in war for neither side to "win" to the degree that they wanted to.
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