On 24 February, Russian tanks rolled over the Belarus-Ukraine border, throwing the global order into chaos and bringing butchery and destruction to European soil.
Vladimir Putin planned for victory in three days. But Ukraine stood strong. Six months later, the conflict is grinding into something close to a stalemate.
Judged against Putin’s initial objectives, his war is an abject failure. Even so, four-fifths of the Eastern Donbas region is now under Russian control, as is Crimea and a stretch of Ukrainian Black Sea coast from Mariupol to Kherson.
