New Delhi, June 10 -- The day European Union interior ministers sat down in Luxembourg to discuss whether military-age Ukrainian men should continue receiving refugee protection, Maria Zakharova was already writing the obituary for European solidarity.

including, she claimed, by sending them directly to the front. Talks were occurring, in unnamed countries, about official lists of Ukrainians eligible for transfer to the Ukrainian military.

No such formal mechanism exists in EU law. No member state government has publicly announced one. But the claim landed in a week when the policy reality underneath it had shifted enough to give it traction among anyone not reading the Luxembourg meeting documents closely.

What actually happened on Ju...