Nearly a month in, the Russia-Ukraine war is defying all expectations | Rajan Menon

Few anticipated what happened once the war began: the Ukrainians put up a tough resistance, even as the balance of power favored Russia

War, as the American Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman observed, is hell." The one that Russia launched against Ukraine on February 24 certainly fits his description.

Cities have come under siege - consider the horrific plight of Mariupol - a hospital and a shopping mall have been struck, as have apartment buildings, in Kyiv as well as Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city. The number of refugees and internally displaced Ukrainians already exceeds 10 million, more than a fifth of the country's population.

Rajan Menon is the director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities, senior research fellow at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, and Anne and Bernard Spitzer emeritus at Powell School, City College of New York