hat marks this war as different is that the Ukrainian resistance has stopped Putin’s invasion in its tracks. The Iraqi and Afghan resistance were never able to do that. And the Ukrainians have been able to do so in large part because the outside world to which they appeal is not a diffuse religious or cultural community, but the armed alliance of the West, which has responded with a flood of modern anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry. The Taliban scrounged their Stingers second-hand. The Ukrainians get them fresh from Nato stores.

The result is that Putin awakens from the resentful nightmare of Russia’s post-Cold War memory into a bona fide, existential crisis, a “real war” that the Russian army is far from certain of winning. And in which the charge sheet for war crimes is clocking up.

Again, the experience of defeat and discredit on the part of the larger power is not itself novel. The US was discomfited by the failure of the war in Iraq and decided to cut its losses in Afghanistan. But though that hurt the incumbent president it did not put America’s regime in question. For Putin, at this point, everything is at stake.