2 small non sense:
temple in vladivostok: waste of hammers... borders pop in 3 turns, it would be more efficient to build a nuke anyway (if you know what I mean -> we don't want to outculture Gnadhi, we want him dead

).
Novgorod: changing a shop into a watermill, and supporting that by working a 1f/0h/0c tile...

loosing a pop and putting a shop is better, ie more tile yields. Population isn't a goal, but a mean. my opinion on this can change if we deicde to raze the indian cow city as we'll need to grow again in this case.
felt like saying it, even if it's not important
on other things:
I said some posts ago that I wouldn't whip, my opinion is the same now... As we built the Kremlin anyway, might as well whip the cities with a lot of water tiles (Yeka, Yaku, southern ice cities, seafoods cities). But don't whip shops/mines/farms/watermills (imho).
I believe 15/18 cossacks is a lot. What the other think? I would start asa we have the nukes to take down 2/3 cities.
I would take all 7 inland cities, starting by Bombay, Delhi, Rostov (revenge!!!) as u said.
Moscow shouldn't be growing on desert mills... 5 unhealthy already, health limits both science via specialists and prod via shops, so if you grow to become unhealthy, you are loosing science and prod. Not even talking of the happy cap which will soon explode

).
GAs: not strong ideas on that... either right away, either after grabbing india... not sure really

edit: switching in US instead of slavery once we are done with teching is another way of leveraging Kremlin, mdy talked about iirc, I like that more than whipping tbh.