ANDREW STUTTAFORD: “We’ve seen some indications here in the U.S. of some degree of sympathy among some on the right for Vladimir Putin. That sympathy (misplaced in my view), I suspect, stems from taking several seemingly logical steps too far, and ending up in a very strange place indeed.” I suppose there’s a certain bracing quality to Putin’s disinterest in bien pensant opinion, but that doesn’t actually make him an admirable guy. But read the whole thing.

Related: “How many divisions has the hashtag?” “Indeed, no one at any senior level in the U.S. government or NATO is contemplating a military response to an invasion of the Ukrainian mainland and the dismemberment of a European country. And Putin knows it. There’s not even a bluff he has to call.”

Plus: “This is not a soft power contest.” If I were President, I’d have sent troops to Kiev, and to the Baltics. But if I were President, I’d have invested a billion dollars into being able to put a horse’s head in Putin’s bed at a key moment, which would be now.