Vladimir Putin has no way out

Illustration by Carl Godfrey Inside Vladimir Putin’s bunker, his war was going according to plan. The Kremlin released footage of Russia’s supreme commander-in-chief meeting his generals at a command post on 3 July, wearing fatigues and surrounded by camouflage netting to suggest he was somewhere near the front line. He listened to the latest battlefield reports, satisfied that Russian forces seemed to be advancing on all fronts. They clearly held the “strategic initiative”, he said. He commended, in particular, the capture of Kostyantynivka, a small city in the Donetsk region that marks the southernmost point in Ukraine’s “fortress belt”. Medals would be awarded, Putin vowed. He reeled off a cascade of statistics: they had seized 133 settlements so far this year; there were around 20,500