New Delhi, June 15 -- EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France - The call with Putin lasted 55 minutes. The call with Zelensky lasted 30. Neither man was told what the other said, and by the time Donald Trump arrived at the G7 summit in the French Alps on Monday, he had declared both conversations a success.

"We had a very good conversation yesterday with President Zelensky and President Putin," Trump told reporters at a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in Evian-les-Bains, where the Group of Seven is meeting through Wednesday. "A lot of good things toward peace are happening."

What those good things are, specifically, Trump did not say. That ambiguity is not accidental. It is the central fact of where the Ukraine conflict sta...