You are right, you can’t use only information Ukraine or Russia provides. But it probably is the case that Ukraine was stomping Russia for pennies on the dollar earlier in the war. However, Russia is not a static force. They learn and change their tactics, and Russia spends more resources now than they did earlier.
It would be a grave mistake to stop aid to Ukraine while they are still willing and able to fight.
Yes, but that is always possible with most protocols, including imap.
Take a look a FUSE and you will see all the creative things people have done with filesystems. Or DNS, lots of fun things have been done with that also.