Turned into a pariah state overnight, Moscow has experienced the equivalent of a financial heart attack, leaving it on the brink of a sovereign debt default for the first time since the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. A deep recession this year seems a certainty.

The invasion itself is also in deep trouble. Western intelligence seems increasingly confident of that. 

Just three weeks since the war started and Russia’s advance has “largely stalled on all fronts,” with its forces suffering “heavy losses”, according to the Ministry of Defence.

As a result of fierce resistance from well coordinated and well-armed Ukrainian forces, the “vast majority of Ukrainian territory, including all major cities, remains in Ukrainian hands”, it said. 

Backed by a constant stream of Western-supplied weapons such as Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger anti-air missiles, some defence analysts are now beginning to think the unthinkable: that Russia’s army may eventually be forced into a retreat.

Yet, only now are we beginning to see the first real signs that the Russian regime is cracking under the weight of international sanctions. Putin’s decline is particularly alarming. 

The famously cold and calculating demeanour has quickly waned and the Russian leader sounds irrational and unhinged. Is it possible that a man who has boasted of being a vicious street thug during his youth, might even be scared?

There are fears that the pandemic has left the Russian leader feeling isolated and paranoid, rumours too of an addiction to steroids. 

Such is the speculation about his mental state, that Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s chief spokesman, felt it necessary to assure the world that Putin’s mental state remains perfectly “normal”.

Yet, Russia’s track record on this front hardly inspires confidence. Soviet and Russian leaders from Leonid Brezhnev to Konstantin Chernenko and Boris Yeltsin have a history of ill-health, and the Russian state, a corresponding tendency of frantically trying to cover-up their demise.

Still, at least a country well-practiced in the art of disinformation has finally begun to acknowledge that sanctions are hurting. Even the most skilful propagandists would struggle to argue otherwise in face of such overwhelming evidence.

The collapse of the rouble has triggered vicious price spikes of imported goods, while the exodus of Western companies from Russia has sparked shortages reminiscent of Soviet rule with some reportedly no longer available at all.