INVASION WOULD HAVE BEEM PREFERABLE, BUT HUIMILIATION WILL DO:

One hundred and thirty thousand troops is a lot: but not enough to subdue a country as large as Ukraine with highly motivated and experienced armed forces, even though they are technologically inferior to the modernised Russian army.

So what exactly is Vladimir Putin's military buildup for? It has failed as intimidation of a West afraid of war. It united the West instead of dividing it, prompting the UK, Poland and the United States to supply significant quantities of equipment and the EU and United States to offer financial support. Though Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, can't bring himself to say Nord Stream 2 will be cancelled, he stood beside president Biden announcing it would be cancelled for him.

The unified NATO response to Russia's demands was solid, and would restore an arms control architecture that was allowed to collapse during the Trump administration (Moscow, naturally, rejected it). Publicising intelligence about imminent Russian moves has robbed Putin of operational surprise as surely as satellite pictures have robbed him of strategic surprise.

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