Thus, Mr. Putin provided the draft of the armistice that would award the Moscow-controlled “people’s republics” in Ukraine’s east a constitutional status within Ukraine. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande ultimately underwrote it, not on the EU’s behalf, but with the tacit approval of a majority of EU member countries.

Most of those countries have chosen not to seriously address the wider implications of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and to treat it as an internal conflict solvable with Russia at Ukraine’s expense. This group outweighs those EU countries that view Russia’s war in Ukraine for what it is: part of a strategy to overturn the post-1991 international order.

The EU and the U.S. expect the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the military situation in Ukraine’s east. The OSCE’s mission is supposed to verify compliance with armistice terms that Russian forces are constantly breaching. NATO and U.S. intelligence see that, and they are speaking up. Yet the OSCE is hostage to Russia’s statutory veto power. This guarantees a weak mandate and an ineffective OSCE performance, as shown by the organization’s missions in overseeing older “frozen conflicts”—the areas grabbed and held with force by Russian-directed separatists in Georgia and Moldova between 1992 and today.