The response to last month’s clash in the Sea of Azov, where Russian forces fired on and seized three naval Ukrainian vessels on their way to Ukrainian ports, showed the potential impact of the current leadership vacuum. Rasmussen believes Putin was testing Western resolve, prior to further actions to come ahead of Ukraine’s presidential and parliamentary elections, in March and October. If so, the West failed the test.

No allied ships sailed into the sea on freedom of navigation patrols, as they’ve done to challenge China’s claims to territorial waters in the South China Sea. Nor were any new sanctions on Russia announced. The toughest international response to the November 25 clash came from President Donald Trump; he canceled a planned meeting with Putin on the margins of the Group of 20 summit in Argentina.

Macron, a self-styled champion of the Western liberal order, was fighting at the time for his political survival against domestic fuel-tax protesters. So was Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, struggling to sell a deal aimed at satisfying a 2016 UK vote to leave the EU. Meanwhile, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, once touted as the leader of the free world, was busy handing over control of her ruling Christian Democratic Union party to a successor.

“There are no grownups to sit at the table anymore,” said Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, who served as Ukraine’s intelligence chief from 2006-2010, and as head of its security services from 2014-2015. “There’s a real danger that we will be left alone with Russia.”