LURING HIM INTO THESE WARS IS THE ONLY HARD PART:

'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." So wrote American author Henry David Thoreau in 1854. It's a fate that is rapidly overtaking Vladimir Putin as he struggles to escape the disastrous trap he set for himself in Ukraine.

Russia's president keeps understandably schtum about his "special military operation". But indefinite stalemate is not what he expected. He didn't expect car bombs in Moscow and humiliating attacks on fortress Crimea, either.

Least of all did Putin anticipate 80,000 Russian soldiers dead or wounded. Dying with them is his Peter the Great pipe dream of a "greater Russia". Extinct already is his reputation as anything other than a killer and a crook.

An endless military quagmire is not a scenario Putin can afford as slow-burn western sanctions corrode his economy and his military's manpower and materiel are steadily depleted. 

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