MOSCOW, July 14 -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that it is Europe and Ukraine, not the United States, that have declared the understandings reached at last year's Alaska summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to be void - a formulation designed to preserve the bilateral Washington-Moscow channel even as the coalition around Ukraine moves to close it.

"President Trump does not comment on these attempts, nor does he say that Alaska are no more, whereas the Europeans and the Ukrainians have publicly said that the Alaska agreements are 'dead,'" Lavrov told reporters Tuesday. Europe "did everything to try to lead the United States astray" after the summit, he added.

The distinction is deliberate. By separating ...