Putin gets desperate

Though Russian President Vladimir Putin has often asserted that his “special military operation” in Ukraine was proceeding as planned, the facts on the ground have said otherwise for months. So Mr. Putin—albeit without admitting it—has switched tactics. In an extraordinary televised address last week, he announced a partial mobilization that would call up 300,000 reservists and forcibly extended the contracts of those already in Ukraine— as well as harsh new penalties for anyone who refuses to fight. He set the stage for annexing occupied areas of Ukraine, which would recast those regions as sovereign territory that Moscow is bound to defend. Most ominously, he said that, to counter threats to its “territorial integrity,” Russia “will certainly use all the means at our disposal”—an obvious allusion to its nuclear arsenal—adding, “This is not a bluff.”

President Biden and the leaders of other nations supporting Ukraine must take all of this seriously even as they take none of it at face value.

The serious part is the call for military reinforcements and the nuclear saber-rattling. It would be negligent to assume that Mr. Putin will not use the former to perpetuate combat as long as he can—or the latter to compensate for the ineptitude of his conventional forces if it comes to that. Cornered, he might be more dangerous. Yet, in practical terms, neither more troops nor nuclear weapons can be brought to bear effectively immediately. The only thing worse than failing to prepare for Mr. Putin to carry out his threats would be to be cowed by them.

There was no sign of that in Mr. Biden’s remarks to the United Nations, in which he decried Mr. Putin’s “irresponsible” language and pledged: “We will stand in solidarity to Russia’s aggression.” That was and is the winning policy, as Mr. Putin’s desperate words and deeds backhandedly confirm.