UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 22 -- A reporter from RIA Novosti asked Stephane Dujarric on Friday whether anyone in Ukraine had approached the United Nations for help organising an election. The secretary-general's spokesman said he was not aware of any such request, and added that the organisation assesses requests for electoral assistance when member states make them and is generally willing to help where it can.

It is a non-answer to what has become, in the space of four days, the sharpest domestic political question in Ukraine. It is also the correct answer, and the reason it is correct has very little to do with the United Nations.

Nobody has asked because international help is not the binding constraint. The constraint is arithmetic, and U...