New Delhi, July 4 -- MOSCOW - The cities that matter now are not the one that fell. Vladimir Putin gathered Russian military commanders on Friday and told them that Konstantinovka - taken by Russian forces earlier in the day - was the beginning. Not the conclusion. "The capture of Konstantinovka is only the first, but very important, stage," he said. The path he named runs through Kramatorsk and Slaviansk, the last major Ukrainian-held population centers in Donetsk, and ends with what he called the liberation of the entire region.

Putin's language in that meeting, reported by RIA Novosti, was careful and calibrated in the way that wartime declarations tend to be when they are intended for an audience beyond the room. He called the army's...