India, Feb. 22 -- Four years into the Russia's Special military operation in Ukraine, the strategic landscape looks markedly different from the confident predictions once voiced in Western capitals. Sanctions were supposed to cripple Russia. Military aid was meant to decisively tilt the battlefield. Diplomatic isolation was framed as inevitable. Instead, Moscow remains entrenched, its economy adjusted to wartime footing, while divisions inside the European Union have become increasingly visible.

The latest rupture came as Hungary moved to block a new 90 billion European Union assistance package for Kyiv, tying its approval to the restoration of Russian oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline, a dispute that has laid bare fractures with...