NATO has come together behind stiff economic sanctions against Moscow. Finland and Sweden, after decades of neutrality, have signaled a new interest in joining the alliance while more autocratic members of the defense pact have excoriated Moscow.

And in an effort to shore up Ukraine's defenses, the European Union for the first time will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday.

In short order, Europe's leading powers have shifted into a position of heightened defensiveness toward Russia.

"We have to realize that we are now faced with a new normal for our security," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday in an interview on CNN, noting the beefed-up NATO troops' presence in its eastern countries and weapons deliveries to Ukraine. "This is just the beginning of the adaptation that we need to do as a response to a much more aggressive Russia."

On Sunday in Berlin, Germany's new Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivered a rousing speech to parliament declaring that the country would spend more than 2% of its GDP on defense — Putin having accomplished what former President Trump sought for four years, and President Obama before him. Scholz also announced a special 100-billion euro fund (about $111 billion) to upgrade the country's army, a fundamental shift by Europe's most powerful nation after a long stretch of limited military spending in the decade after the European debt crisis.