ST. PETERSBURG, June 6 -- The letter had been addressed to the Kremlin, but Vladimir Putin's real answer went somewhere else entirely.

Speaking at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, the Russian president dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's open-letter proposal for a direct summit and then, with a phrase that settled the question more definitively than any diplomatic communique, turned to address the men fighting his war. "Work, brothers," he said.

That was the answer. Not the extended rebuttal about Zelensky's age remarks, or the suggestion that the Ukrainian leader had contacted him through a Russian businessman. Not the assertion that he had "never refused talks." The real ...