It has been calculated that each day of the invasion is costing Russia more than $20bn. The campaign may, in the end, expire from the haemorrhage of cash. But equally, if not more damaging to its prospects, may be the disenchantment of Putin’s conscripts. The more these troops are exposed to the raking fire and hostility of the Ukrainians, the more confused they will become. Napoleon is said to have estimated that the success of any campaign was one-quarter attributable to numbers and material and three-quarters to morale. If that holds good in Ukraine, the troubles facing Putin are just beginning. The long-term occupation, which is the only possible alternative to the failed blitzkrieg, will add to the numbers of young men returning to Russia hideously wounded or in body bags, as an intractable insurgency takes hold.

In an essay of 2021, Putin let it be known that he didn’t think Ukraine was actually a country at all. But the war has imprinted on Ukraine its epic identity in flesh, blood and tears in ways he could not have imagined. Not only will he fail but the failure will eat away at his domestic omnipotence. Disillusioned troops returning from the eastern front in the first world war had a crucial part to play in the revolutions of 1917. And no less astonishing and courageous than the resistance in Ukraine, has been the eruption of protest in St Petersburg and Moscow. When your credibility demands the arrest of the 77-year-old Yelena Osipova, you know you’re in trouble. It is a truism that the majority of Russians who get their news from state television will never be swayed by crowds of the young in the big cities. But as the numbers of widowed and orphaned inexorably mount, hostility to those responsible for their bereavement will morph a student revolt into popular fury.