Putin has every incentive to end the war as quickly as possible. There are two ways he could do this. The first, which he has now begun to try, is to win the war through drastic escalation. But the meaning of victory is now less clear than ever. While Russia can occupy Ukraine at great human cost, no Russian puppet regime it installs will be legitimate or stable. Russia’s international isolation and domestic crisis will intensify.

The second is for Putin to scale back his goals and negotiate a peace short of regime change in Kyiv. But given Putin’s obsession with Ukraine and the stakes he has raised, this would be a humiliating setback that he would consider only if his own regime’s survival were in doubt. Russia is not yet serious about the negotiations it has begun with Ukraine. Its head of delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, is a party hack and undistinguished former culture minister with no diplomatic or military experience. Talks are a diversion or, at most, a prelude to forced capitulation as Russia intensifies its indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets.

As at every stage of Russia’s failure in Ukraine, escalation is both the riskiest course of action and the only one not guaranteed to leave Russia worse off.