It may not get as much attention as the fighting on the ground, says Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, but the West has hit Russia with an “economic nuclear bomb”. The valuation of the Russian banks that were sanctioned or thrown off the Swift international banking system have totally tanked – the London-listed shares of Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, have collapsed more than 99%. Ratings agencies have downgraded Russia’s status to “junk” and warned that the country may default on its debt. The dollar valuation of the ruble has fallen an astonishing 40% in a month. Companies are acting, too. McDonald’s, Starbucks and Coca-Cola have suspended their Russian operations. Boeing and Airbus, which built two thirds of Russia’s commercial airliners, are no longer providing maintenance or spare parts – meaning the planes will have to be grounded.

The conventional wisdom about the war in Ukraine is that Vladimir Putin has “miscalculated”, says Lionel Barber in The Spectator. In this view, all his poorly executed blitzkrieg has achieved is a “reinvigorated” Nato and a barrage of economic measures. But what if it’s really the West which has miscalculated? What if all our sanctions and “intensified military aid” to Ukraine’s local resistance encourage Putin to double down and use a “weapon of last resort” – be it nuclear, chemical or biological – “even at the risk of World War Three”? It is tempting to assume Putin is bluffing, but his actions so far suggest the opposite. After a recent phone call with the Russian president, Emmanuel Macron concluded: “The worst is yet to come.”