Essay

Putin’s Already Won

He’s exposed fatal divisions in the “West” even as Russians still back his Ukraine invasion. December 11, 2025, 5:03 PM

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives to speak at the Kremlin in Moscow in this photo supplied by Sputnik.

Russia’s War in Ukraine

Understanding the conflict three years on.

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For a guy who’s lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers and barely moved his front lines forward in a war that’s already lasted longer than U.S. involvement in World War II, Vladimir Putin is looking pretty smug and self-satisfied these days.

It has become commonplace for Western strategists to say that , no matter what he tries now, the Russian dictator will come out of his Ukraine adventure a loser. In nearly four years of horrific bloodshe

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