Stating the obvious

The ballyhooed Alaska summit seems to have come to nothing, except let Mr. Putin stave off further sanctions pressure. Mr. Trump now says he needs another two weeks to figure out what to do. He puts the onus on both sides. “I’ll see whose fault it is,” he said. “We’re going to see whether or not they have a meeting.”

The same error was captured in Mr. Vance’s interview on NBC this weekend. “We are trying to negotiate as much as we can with both the Russians and the Ukrainians to find a middle ground to stop the killing,” he said. “We’re effectively mediating.”

How much more evident can it be that Russia is the obstacle to peace? Mr. Putin’s intent is to wipe out a relatively free and Western neighbor whose existence threatens his vision of a Greater Russia. What is the compromise position for that project? It won’t be settled by choosing parcels of land to swap.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-russia-ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-vladimir-putin-sergei-lavrov-185b324d