Putin’s delusions in Ukraine could rouse him to take on NATO

Imagine the U.S. were to invade Canada, a country with one-tenth of the U.S. population and a military incomparably smaller and less-equipped. Imagine also that American forces quickly capture parts of Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba. Imagine, finally, that Canada succeeds in pushing the U.S. out of some of the initially captured territories and attaining a stalemate on the front. And then, four years of intense fighting, the U.S. controls only 19 percent of Canada and has suffered 1.3 million casualties. 

Most reasonable people would conclude that the U.S. has already lost such a conflict — not because every stalemate qualifies as a defeat, but because a superpower should be able to defeat a far smaller and weaker opponent. Weak states win if they don’t lose. Strong states lose if they don’t win.

The same obviously holds true for the Russo-Ukrainian War. The current stalemate is a Ukrainian victory and a Russian defeat. As much as the Trump administration appears not to understand this, Vladimir Putin seems to be inhabiting a make-believe world.

The Russian dictator would do well to read a recent post by Ilya Remeslo, a hyper-nationalist and formerly enthusiastically pro-Putin Russian blogger. Remeslo — no liberal democratic opponent of Putin’s regime — has come to blame Putin for the failing war effort and the economy and concludes, “Vladimir Putin is not a legitimate president. Vladimir Putin must resign and be brought to trial as a........

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