How Does Russia Lose in Ukraine? Putin May Tell Us Monday

Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, authors of an analysis published by the U.K.’s Royal United Services Institute, share an intuition of this column: In mid-March, Mr. Putin passed up an opportunity to cut his losses. “Instead, the decision was made to not only continue with the narrative of a struggle against Nazism in Ukraine, but to expand the scope of ambition to one of systems confrontation” — i.e., between Russia and NATO, which Mr. Putin, in a fact that is perhaps not widely appreciated, has always acknowledged to his people greatly outclasses Russia in conventional military power.