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For the Russians, the war is going badly. Their much-vaunted offensive in Donbas is bogged down in the mud; this is the rainy season in southern Ukraine. Their artillery continues to pound

Ukrainian positions and cities such as Kharkiv, where more than a quarter of the huge Soviet-era blocks of flats have been hit. Yet as long as the Ukrainian Air Force retains control of the

skies, despite being heavily outnumbered, a Russian breakthrough seems unlikely. On the map, it looks easy to encircle the defenders of Ukrainian Donetsk. On the ground, though, the Russians

are losing men and materiel faster than they can replace them. They are losing a war of attrition. Hence Vladimir Putin is turning to other methods to validate his decision to go to war.

Putinism is Clausewitz inverted: politics as war by other means. His decision to cut off gas supplies to NATO countries, for example, fits with his expansion of Russian war aims. These now

include claiming sovereignty over all the occupied regions of Ukraine: not only Donetsk and Luhansk, but also Kherson, Mariupol and Zaporizhzhya. Much of this territory remains unconquered,

as of course do the two great cities of Kharkiv and Odessa. But Putin now lays claim to the entire northern Black Sea coastline, thereby linking up with the Russian-controlled Moldavian

enclave of Transnistria. If Ukraine falls, Moldova will be next. This is what Liz Truss meant in her Mansion House speech (discussed here yesterday) when she said that “geopolitics is back”.

Not only our leaders, but all of us need a crash course in the history, geography and sociology of Eastern Europe. Otherwise we risk missing the significance of Putin’s increasingly

sinister remarks. This week he declared: “Russia cannot allow the creation of anti-Russian territories around the homeland.” Does this include NATO countries, such as Poland, Bulgaria,

Romania and the Baltic states? What of Finland and Sweden, which say they now intend to join the Atlantic Alliance? Putin and his functionaries are escalating their rhetoric against the

West, claiming that NATO is fighting a “proxy war” in Ukraine. As the Justice Secretary Dominic Raab pointed out, this is a lie: under international law, supplying arms to a country that has

suffered an unprovoked attack — as the UN says is the case with Ukraine — is lawful. But Russia is now targeting these supplies and may even go further by attempting to interdict them on

the Polish side of the border, provoking a clash with NATO forces. By unilaterally cutting off gas supplies the Kremlin is already prosecuting economic warfare against Poland and Bulgaria;

it threatens to do so against Germany and Austria too, unless they submit to its demand to be paid in roubles. Europe ought not to give in to such blackmail, but it is far from certain that

the will to maintain solidarity exists. Behind all such coercive measures lies the ultimate threat of weapons of mass destruction. The mysterious explosions inside Russian territory, for

which nobody has yet claimed responsibility, may be the work of Ukrainian drones, sabotage or something else: a pretext for Putin to deploy WMD. The psychological impact of the use of

chemical weapons in 2013 by the Russian ally Bashir Assad in Syria, for example, was considerable — especially when it became clear that the West was impotent. The Russian dictator may

calculate that he would also get away with using poison gas in Ukraine, though this time the mood is very different in London, Paris and Washington. If, however, he were to use tactical

nuclear weapons on European soil, there is no doubt that NATO would have to react, or lose all credibility. The Foreign Secretary noted in her speech that Putin is believed to be considering

such a deployment to break the deadlock in Donbas, especially given his self-imposed deadline of May 9. She warned that whereas Soviet leaders had observed nuclear deterrence “with some

degree of rationality” in the Cold War, “none of these factors applies to Putin. We are dealing with a desperate rogue operator with no interest in international mores.” As if to reinforce

this analysis, Putin’s belligerent rhetoric became even more menacing this week. Claiming provocation by the West, whose sanctions sought to “strangle us economically”, he warned that if

NATO were to intervene in Ukraine or “create unacceptable strategic threats for Russia, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be quick as lightning. We have all the tools for

this. The kind that no one else can boast of right now… All the decisions on this matter have already been made.” When he speaks of “lightning strikes”, Putin is talking about his hypersonic

missiles, which are capable of landing nuclear warheads on NATO countries. This would only happen in a doomsday scenario of mutually assured destruction, as he and his military well know.

But in theory Russia’s hypersonic missiles, which have already been deployed in Ukraine with conventional warheads, do give him a tactical advantage. The West has no such technology. How the

last three US administrations — Obama, Trump and Biden — allowed Russia, with a fraction of the Pentagon’s budget, to steal a march on them is a question that a Congressional inquiry might

like to consider. But there is no time for that now. NATO needs to reformulate, reiterate and reinforce its deterrence strategy as a matter of urgency. Its own hypersonic missiles, now being

developed in the US, are several years away; Putin is exploiting this window of opportunity. In all other aspects of warfare, the West is technically superior to Russia. Yet for now,

Putin’s bluff may work. We must be prepared for a tactical nuclear attack in Donbas, backed by the threat of a hypersonic strategic nuclear strike against the West if NATO forces were to

retaliate directly against Russian forces. The war in Ukraine is therefore even more unpredictable than in its earlier phases. As Ms Truss warns, it could last almost indefinitely, for

anything up to a decade. Or it could be decided quite suddenly, as occurred in the successive collapses of the Russian, Austria-Hungarian and German empires at the end of the First World

War. In the meantime, we must continue not only to step up support for Ukraine, but to keep reminding Russians that Putin is leading them to unbearable suffering and ultimate defeat. A

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