Is the U.S. really going to work with the Kremlin to implement another nuclear deal with Iran? And how is Russia still a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council? Its irrelevance in this conflict has exposed that the United Nations is worse than useless. It implicitly abets the world’s dictators by giving them political legitimacy.

The Russian withdrawal from the Kyiv region marks a setback for its original war aims, but it is still not a defeat for Mr. Putin. He might be regrouping his forces for another attempt on Kyiv later. Or perhaps he is changing his war aims to focus on conquering the east and south of the country. The Sunday bombardment by Russian ships suggests that Odessa, a city of about one million on the Black Sea, remains a Kremlin target.

Which makes it dismaying that Biden officials continue to assert that the war is a “strategic defeat” for Mr. Putin. They repeat the talking point as if they’re trying to persuade Americans that the war has already been won. “If you step back and look at this, this has already been a dramatic strategic setback for Russia and, I would say, a strategic defeat,” Mr. Blinken said on CNN Sunday.