“They are having problems,” a NATO official said of the Russian forces, pointing to the alliance’s latest intelligence. “They lack diesel, they are proceeding way too slow and morale is obviously an issue.”…

Putin, it seems, hasn’t just misjudged Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, but also just how hard a line the international community would take against Russia in the event of an invasion.

For years, the Russian president has faced very little pushback from the West over his illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, his brutal support for the Syrian regime and acts of aggression in other countries.

For all their strong words of condemnation for Putin and his regime, Western countries still bought gas from Russia, offered a safe haven to Russian oligarchs and retained relatively normal diplomatic relations with Moscow.

But this time around — despite a few early rocky patches which saw Western nations accused of not hitting Russia hard enough — Putin has faced an unusually united Western alliance.