Is the West deceiving itself about Russia’s ‘defeat’ in Ukraine?

Following his fateful decision to invade Ukraine, Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin has been customarily described as a high-stakes gambler. Yet the embarrassing underperformance of the Russian military in Ukraine and the bite of Western sanctions suggest that Putin is no genius mastermind strategist but a risk taker who has bitten off more than he can chew.

As yesterday’s series of summits in Brussels – Nato, EU, and G7 – is showing, the West has also made a dangerous gamble of its own: expecting that it can stay out of the war and also get the outcome that we all want, namely a decisive Russian defeat and a downfall of Putin’s regime.

The current strategy, in other words, is to let Ukrainians fight and bleed – while providing them with some forms of military and other aid, but not with others – and hoping that Russia will bleed faster. Hence the explicit ruling out of any Nato military presence in Ukraine by both the Biden administration and by