Russia’s forces may indeed be overstretched and underpowered, but that doesn’t mean Putin is at a point where he is forced to quit. As Kotkin warns, a brief respite while optimism rises over peace talks could just give him the time to regroup.

“After three or four weeks of war, you need a strategic pause,” he said. “You have to refit your armour, resupply your ammo and fuel depots, fix your planes. You have to bring in reserves. There’s always a planned pause after about three to four weeks.”

Even if Putin finds he cannot seize control of Kyiv and oust Zelensky, even if in the long run he can only lose thanks to international isolation and Russia’s crippled economy, he can still cause mayhem on a terrible scale, either continuing to fight a war of attrition or wreaking as much destruction as he can before withdrawing.

For him, the tragic human toll of war seems to count for nothing. In Syria for seven years, he’s helped Bashar al-Assad wage a war that has killed hundreds of thousands and left places such as Aleppo in utter ruin.

It’s also worth remembering a personal incident from Putin’s life in the 1990s. His first wife, Lyudmila, had a bad car crash in 1994, just as Putin was meeting media mogul Ted Turner in St Petersburg about holding a sporting event in the city. Putin, as he recounted in First Person, a book published in 2000 by three journalists who interviewed him at length, went to the hospital and inquired about his wife. The doctors told him she would be fine. “Are you sure?” he asked. They said yes. “So I left,” recalled Putin. He went back to his business meetings without seeing his wife, who had serious injuries to her skull and spine.

This is a man not softened by emotion or easily deterred from his objectives. Even if, in Western eyes he loses, Putin may see wrecking Ukraine as a victory of sorts.

In an article for Foreign Affairs ahead of the invasion, US academics Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage wrote: “If Russia gains control of Ukraine or manages to destabilise it on a major scale, a new era for the United States and for Europe will begin…

“If Russia achieves its political aims in Ukraine by military means, Europe will not be what it was before the war. Not only will US primacy in Europe have been qualified; any sense that the European Union or Nato can ensure peace on the continent will be the artefact of a lost age.”

Putin’s health – what do we know?

Much depends on a key point that is hard, perhaps impossible, to pin down: Putin’s mental state. In recent videos, he’s appeared almost spitting with anger and bile. Others show him holding meetings with generals or politicians at the end of long tables, or alone in front of an array of acolytes. Do they show the power of an autocrat or the isolation of a worried and weakening man?

The worrying truth is you can take your pick. Some commentators have noted how Putin, once famed for his bare-chested machismo, now looks puffy and grey. On Friday, he was pictured seemingly limping off a Moscow stage. Is he ill? Has medication damaged his faculties, even made him mad?