Vladimir Putin has had a very bad week. His army, allegedly refurbished after its poor performance in the war against Georgia in 2008, has failed to deliver the promised blitzkrieg. It has launched a brutal bombardment of Kharkhiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, full of Russian-speakers who were supposed to welcome Putin's soldiers as liberators. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s capital Kiev, which Russians like to call 'the mother of Russian cities', looks as if it is about to suffer the same fate.