Speaking this week, July 2 -- For most European prime ministers, the question of whether the West is at war with Russia is one they have been carefully trained to avoid answering. Robert Fico does not share that training, or no longer pretends to.

that the "large number of professional paid mercenaries" operating weapons systems on Ukrainian soil makes the Western world "virtually in a state of war with Russia," TASS reported. The statement came in Fico's capacity as holder of the V4 presidency, the rotating chair of the Visegrad Group, the four-nation bloc of Central European states, and it was delivered not as a provocation but as a restatement of what Fico called an obvious reality.

Whether that framing reflects honest accounting or ...