New Delhi, June 10 -- The man who runs Europe's longest land border with Russia said Wednesday what most of his European counterparts have been unwilling to say out loud: it is time to call the Kremlin.

yet whose president has now twice in four weeks called for engagement with the man on the other side of it.

"I believe that it would be high time for Europe to reach out and have diplomatic conversations with the leadership of Russia, more specifically President Putin," Stubb said.

The context in which Stubb is speaking matters as much as the words themselves. Washington's attention has shifted sharply toward the Iran war, and the informal ceasefire talks that the Trump administration briefly energized have produced nothing durable. For...