United Nations, Sept. 24 -- The United States' top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, told the United Nations Security Council that the war in Ukraine "cannot end militarily" and "It will end at a negotiating table," a blunt line that cut through a week of summit grandstanding and televised bravado. The remark, delivered in New York as leaders cycled through set pieces, put Washington's rhetoric about victory in uneasy tension with the practical admission that only talks will close the books on Europe's most explosive conflict in a generation.

Rubio's phrasing was not hedged. It was not wrapped in the diplomat's favorite qualifiers about "conditions-based processes" or "windows of opportunity," he said, according to US Department ...