If a shrewd Kremlin military analyst had drawn up a list of objectives for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the reality of this horrific misadventure is more or less the photo negative of that. Rather than a quick and decisive march to Kyiv, the Russian military has alternately been bogged down and repelled, received nothing but anger and derision from the locals, sustained heavy losses and lost a crop of high-ranking officers. Meantime, the West’s tightening vise around the Russian economy has made things increasingly hard on Vladimir Putin’s regime domestically.