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Admittedly, the destruction inflicted by the Russian war machine has been colossal – unprecedented in Europe, indeed, since 1945. The Ukrainians may have suffered an even greater combined death toll of combatants and civilians, besides many more wounded and traumatised.
Several million Ukrainians have become refugees and up to three million, mainly women and children, have been taken to Russia, most of them against their will, to a fate still unknown. The cost of reconstruction, already at least $1 trillion (£830bn), is rising by the day.
In the course of its war of annihilation and occupation of large parts of Ukraine, the Russian Army has left behind convincing evidence of thousands of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The possibility that military and political leaders, up to and including Putin himself, may end up being arraigned before a court in The Hague has raised the stakes in this conflict. Neither side can afford to lose. No Russian autocrat has ever gone on trial as a war criminal – and for Putin, with his exalted sense of historical destiny, such a fate is unthinkable.
Yet none of these moral and criminal considerations weighs as heavily with Putin as one simple fact: he miscalculated on the grandest possible scale. His attempt to wipe Ukraine from the map and to turn Ukrainians into Russians has been a spectacular failure.
Strategically, too, Putin’s gamble has already ruined Russia’s status as a superpower. Far from weakening Nato, the war has given it a much-needed shot in the arm.
Sweden and Finland are joining the Atlantic alliance, abandoning generations of neutrality and forcing the Russians to divert new forces to protect their northern flank.
After decades of isolationist complaints about the failure of Europe to share the burden of its own defence, the US has reinforced its political commitment to the continent and its military presence there. The Europeans themselves have been shaken out of their pacifist complacency and are rapidly rearming for the first time since the Cold War.
Russia’s regional and global prestige has plummeted, as even its allies turn the tables on the Kremlin. Putin himself, who has a habit of treating other leaders with contempt, has been repeatedly humiliated by his Turkish, Iranian and other Asian counterparts.
He has been made to wait by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, President Sadyr Japarov of Kyrgyzstan and the Emir of Qatar, while in November it was the turn of the Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokaev to signal disrespect.
Even Putin’s most reliable acolyte, the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, broke with precedent by forcing Putin to visit him in Minsk last month rather than making his usual pilgrimage to the Kremlin.
Despite speculation about a joint spring offensive against Kyiv, he has so far firmly resisted pressure from his Russian patron to let Belarus be drawn into the conflict.
Lukashenko hopes to follow in the footsteps of Francisco Franco – the Spanish dictator who refused Hitler’s entreaties and survived in power for another three decades – rather than emulate Mussolini, who entered the war and was ultimately executed by partisans.
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