Putin is playing a very weak hand with determination, while the West is playing a very strong hand with absolute incompetence and feeble-mindedness. Although NATO could have stopped Russia's invasion within 72 hours if the USA and UK had lived up to their legally binding agreement (signed in 1994) to guarantee Ukraine's territorial integrity, we all sat on our hands and the Western media was thrilled to have another revenue-generating sensation to make up for the faded glory of coronapanic. And so the reportage was too good to bring to a quick end, and the West could do the whole 1930s appeasement thing all over again.

Now we're suffering from high energy prices and high food prices while sanctions have had precisely zero effect on Russia. In fact, because of the increase in (dollar denominated) hydrocarbon prices, the Russian economy is actually in better shape than before Putin launched his invasion. As is always the case, sanctions are merely the way in which Western politicians pretend to take action while doing nothing of importance. So we're being hit by the effects of a war we easily could have prevented in the first place.

But what of the supposed collapse of Russia? Putin has turned manufacturing into a war economy, with 7/24 production of munitions and other equipment. Meanwhile the West is exhausting its supplies of expensive materiel and has zero ability to ramp up production. This is clearly a one-way road to continued Russian battlefield dominance despite the many shortcomings of its ramshackle military. Meanwhile, the West is fragmenting predictably as spineless politicians scramble for the exit so as to appease mindless ignorant voters who can't grasp the simple connection between Russian aggression and economic impacts. Ukraine will ultimately be starved of materiel, it will not be able to replace the thousands killed each week, and Western support - always too little and far too late - will evaporate completely.

Putin will thus win merely by outlasting the flabby self-indulgent West. The fact that Russia will then have to exterminate hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in order to fully pacify the country will be left unreported in the West, because it would lead a few people to grasp just how weak, stupid, and immoral we truly are.

And then Putin will take the Baltic nations and NATO will perform a magnificent "strategic withdrawal."