Is American resolve a match for Putin’s brutality and lies?

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In Vladimir Putin, Americans are facing not just a brutal ex-spy with little regard for human life, but an utterly shameless liar.

This is a leader who starts a war he insists is not a war, who bombs apartment buildings while arguing he is not targeting civilians. Putin rails against fictional neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian government, then obliterates a Holocaust memorial while taking out a television tower.

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Even as the whole word watches the videotaped destruction of a country, Putin’s Canadian embassy insists that "the Russian army does not occupy Ukrainian territory and takes all measures to preserve the lives and safety of civilians." What’s more, the statement invokes the Nazi regime by accusing the West of "Goebbels-style propaganda," "lies" and "fake news." It doesn’t get any more brazen than that.

But what if Western sanctions – along with corporate cutoffs from Apple to ExxonMobil – don’t succeed in stopping Putin? In a line that The New York Times called "ominous," President Biden spoke in his State of the Union address of the challenge for NATO "in the event that Putin decides to keep moving west." What if he goes after client state Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan?

A picture shows damages after the shelling by Russian forces of Constitution Square in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-biggest city, on March 2, 2022. (Getty Images)

Biden acknowledged that "our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine" – a ground war between nuclear powers has virtually no support – "but to defend our NATO allies." Indeed, the whole point of the post-World War II alliance is that any attack on any member would trigger a joint defense by all members.

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Whatever the reports about Putin’s mental stability, he is obviously isolated and increasingly frustrated by the fierce resistance to his advancing forces. 

That means he could ramp up the aerial assault on Kyiv and other major cities, trying to inflict enough human carnage to get Ukraine to surrender or buy time for his soldiers to cut them off from the outside world.

Putin says the U.S. and its allies have ignored Russia's top security demands.  (Associated Press)

What’s mildly encouraging is the earthquake impact of the West’s sanctions, which have choked off Russia’s banking system and devastated its stock market. The combined impact of U.S. companies bailing on Russia, social media crackdowns and sports league expulsions have deepened the sense of the Kremlin as a pariah state.

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But it still may not be enough.

Even if Russia can subdue Ukraine, however, how does it occupy a country of that size that has shown a fierce willingness to defend itself? As both the U.S. and Soviet Union learned in Afghanistan, a long-term intervention can be quite costly in terms of blood and treasure. 

President Joe Biden delivers his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. At left is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. (Associated Press)

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But all this assumes the West has the stamina to stick with all-out sanctions that will be painful for all sides, and not just in terms of rising energy prices. Right now, as was clear at the start of Biden’s speech to Congress, the civilized world is in a state of maximum shock and outrage over this unprovoked invasion. But will that fade over time as the Ukrainian story loses its novelty and many people gravitate back to everyday problems? Will the media keep the crisis front and center over a period of weeks and months? The ability of the Western alliance to contain Vladimir Putin’s ambitions of empire may depend on those things.