By Thomas Meaney. Mr. Meaney, a fellow at the Max Planck Society in Germany, writes regularly on American foreign policy and international relations.

The greatest blunder President Vladimir Putin may have made so far in Ukraine is giving the West the impression that Russia could lose the war. The early Russian strike on Kyiv stumbled and failed. The Russian behemoth seemed not nearly as formidable as it had been made out to be. The war suddenly appeared as a face-off between a mass of disenchanted Russian incompetents and supercharged, savvy Ukrainian patriots.

In Ukraine, the United States Is In Over Its Head