Russian President Vladimir Putin’s greatest problem may no longer be winning the war in Ukraine. It may be finding a way to stop it. More than four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, neither side has secured a decisive military breakthrough. Ukraine has survived predictions of collapse and increasingly demonstrated its ability to carry the war into Russia through long-range drone strikes.

Moscow, meanwhile, retains vastly greater resources and continues to grind forward at enormous human cost, but without achieving the strategic victory that would justify the sacrifice. For Putin, this is an increasingly dangerous equilibrium. A compromise that leaves Ukraine outside Russian control and fails to deliver the territorial objectives for which he launched the invasion could look less like peace than an admission of failure. The Kremlin’s predicament is therefore not conventional military weakness. Russia remains a formidable power, with a large defence-industrial base, extensive manpower and the capacity to sustain repression.

Its economy has adapted better than many Western forecasts anticipated. But strength does not automatically produce strategic success. Russia is........

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