Putin’s baffling war strategy

After four days of fighting in Ukraine, it’s not going especially well for Russian forces. According to Ukraine’s defense ministry, Russia has lost about 4,300 troops and nearly 150 tanks, and both Kyiv, the capital, and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, are still under Ukrainian control.

Casualty numbers are unverified and should be treated with some caution, but they’re still a sharp contrast to initial Russian expectations, which assumed the Russian armed forces’ greater numbers and access to more advanced weapons systems would result in a swift, relatively painless invasion. Ukrainian forces, however, have...