New Delhi, June 15 -- EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France - The phrase that mattered came in the opening seconds, before any prepared statement, before any formal bilateral had begun. Donald Trump sat down across from Emmanuel Macron at the Group of Seven summit on Monday and told the assembled reporters that he had spoken the previous day with both Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin - and that, for the first time since the Alaska summit produced nothing in writing, he believed both men were prepared to move. "I see, maybe, we can do something there, I really do," Trump said. "I think they're both open to it."

The qualifier matters. "Maybe" is not a ceasefire. "Open to it" is not a framework. But in the calculus of Trump's Ukraine diplomacy, whic...