The successes of Ukraine’s recent counter-offensives have thrown Russia’s failures into sharp relief, with questions now brewing about Moscow’s next moves. In the near term, these will involve retaliation of the most rudimentary nature, such as missile strikes on civilian infrastructure around Kharkiv and elsewhere. As Ukraine’s momentum builds ahead of winter, Vladimir Putin himself risks being left out in the cold. 

The speed of Ukraine’s progress has exceeded even the predictions of the majority of military experts, Handelsblatt reported, and laid bare Mr. Putin’s flailing strategies. As the German daily put it, “the Russian army is not the overwhelming force that many in the West have feared—this force is the product of Putin’s rule: eaten away by the corrupt system he built like a mafia, bled dry both materially and morally.”  

If the Kremlin chief is now “standing in front of the ruins of his self-delusion,” as Handelsblatt suggests, that poses new dangers.

Many analysts share the contention that having invested so much in the war he started, Mr. Putin cannot afford to lose it. One scenario is demonstrations of wrath along the lines of what Russian unleashed on Mariupol, the Black Sea port that for now at least lies mostly in ruins. 

Russia is already apparently destroying as many power lines, natural gas pipelines, and power plants as it can to make the coming winter a nightmare for Ukraine. That path of destruction risks generating a new wave of Ukrainian refugees who could flee to Western Europe, where there is already an energy crisis.

How Mr. Putin adjusts to the issue of manpower in Ukraine following the drawdowns from Kharkiv, Izyum, and Balakliya is another looming question. Kyiv’s strategy of employing Western-supplied rockets and targeted artillery strikes to degrade Russian forces, as well as partisan attacks on Russian logistical bases and command posts, has paid off. 

A military adviser to the Ukrainian defense ministry, Serhiy Kuzan, told the Financial Times, “If you remove the asymmetric advantage the Russians have in artillery, they don’t only stop fighting, they flee.” Mr. Putin could try to redress any impending numerical disadvantage by ordering a general mobilization. 

The AP reported that a retired U.S. Air Force general who was NATO’s top commander between 2013 and 2016, Philip Breedlove, said, “I agree there should be no spiking of the ball because Russia still has cards it can play.” He added that Ukraine “is now clearly making durable changes in its east and north and I believe that if the West properly equips Ukraine, they’ll be able to hold on to their gains.”

If one of Moscow’s cards includes calling up the reserves, that would be less risky than, say, the use of tactical nuclear weapons to secure territorial gains — a scenario that has been raised in the past but is considered unlikely. Yet it could also tilt the war back into a stalemate situation during the most hazardous season of the year. Whether Mr. Putin would actually go the general mobilization route, and risk domestic backlash in doing so, is an open question. Further estrangement from Russians puts his own political future on shakier ground than it might seem. 

Russia’s press, for the most part now all cowed by Moscow’s strongman, are conspicuously silent on the Russian army’s sagging might and questions as to the Kremlin’s next moves — the latter are virtually nonexistent. On Tuesday, as reports surfaced in Ukrainian media of new Russian troop desertions at Kreminna, in the eastern Donbas region, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported on water and power outages at Kherson, the port city where the Russians mistakenly believed Kyiv would begin its first major counteroffensive. 

Komsomolskaya Pravda, the popular Russian tabloid, falsely reported, “Not Ukraine, but a NATO team attacked Izyum.” In nearly seven months of fighting, no such propaganda pieces have steered the Kremlin any closer to meeting even one of its objectives in Ukraine. As the cracks in Mr. Putin’s alternate universe widen this autumn, his cunning will keep him from falling in — but the world watches as Kyiv’s fight nudges him closer to the void.

In his nightly address late Monday, President Zelensky said, “From the beginning of September until today, our soldiers have already liberated more than 6,000 square kilometers of the territory of Ukraine — in the east and south. The movement of our troops continues.”