Here’s the central dilemma of the Ukraine invasion: This is a war Russian dictator Vladimir Putin believes he “cannot afford to lose” (in the words of U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines), but it’s also one he cannot seem to win. It took U.S. troops only three weeks to take Baghdad in 2003. But the Ukraine war is now almost three weeks old, and Putin is as far as ever from his stated objectives of “demilitarization and denazification,” meaning the imposition of a Russian puppet regime in Ukraine.