The tête-à-tête between Presidents Trump and Zelensky at San Pietro is one of the most striking images from the papal obsequies. Details are as yet scarce as to what the two leaders discussed. Yet after the funeral, Mr. Trump, on his return flight to America, expressed hitherto-unstated doubts about President Putin’s commitment to forging a peace in Ukraine. Does this mark a shift in the president’s approach to the Russian tyrant? There is a tantalizing hint of that in Mr. Trump’s seeming reappraisal of Mr. Putin in light of a recent wave of attacks on civilians. “Maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war,” Mr. Trump muses. He even avers it was “in jest” to say it would take him “one day” to end the war. “We discussed a lot one on one,” Mr. Zelensky says of the parley, including a “full and unconditional ceasefire” and a “reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war.”“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, wondering if the Kremlin strongman is “just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through ‘Banking’ or ‘Secondary Sanctions?’ Too many people are dying.” It’s striking, too, that these reflections emerged just a day after Mr. Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Mr. Putin at Moscow.Following that meeting, in which some critics reckoned that Mr. Witkoff appeared, in a video clip that emerged of his warm greeting of Mr. Putin at the Kremlin, to be too much of a supplicant, Mr. Trump had averred that Ukraine and Russia were “very close to a deal.” A clearer-eyed estimate came from Senator Grassley, who on Friday urged “the toughest of sanctions on Putin.” Why weren’t the toughest sanctions put on Mr. Putin a long time ago?It’s not the first time that Mr. Witkoff, who cut his teeth in the field of Manhattan real estate, has faced carping over his diplomatic endeavors. In March, these columns noted how Mr. Witkoff had shown some symptoms of the Stockholm Syndrome when he conceded he was “duped” by Hamas officials that another envoy, Adam Boehler, had deemed “nice guys.” Mr. Witkoff even allowed that Hamas’ Qatari patrons were “good, decent people.”Then again, too, Mr. Witkoff has indicated he doesn’t see Mr. Putin as a “bad guy,” and he also seemed overly sympathetic to Moscow’s claims of sovereignty over Eastern Ukrainian regions that the Russian army seized by force. He even suggested these regions had “voted” to be Russian in the sham election conducted by Moscow in 2022. “Can the envoy who presents himself as an honest broker put his thumb on the scales in favor of Mr. Putin?” we asked.On another front, there are fears that Messrs. Trump and Witkoff are moving toward what Israel sees as a “bad deal” with Tehran, per the Times of Israel, “that will not meet Jerusalem’s stated essential conditions for ensuring the regime cannot attain nuclear weapons.” On a lighter note from Paris, there was what the Daily Mail calls Mr. Witkoff’s “disastrous attempt at flattery” when he sought to compare the glories of the Élysée Palace to Mar-a-Lago.The reported bafflement of the sophisticated Europeans, who appear to have met Mr. Witkoff’s attempt at a compliment with their standard simpering, calls to mind Washington’s caution in his farewell address. “Why,” America’s first president asked, “by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?”Messrs. Trump and Witkoff’s diplomacy could yet yield results. Yet their navigation of European and Mideast diplomatic currents echoes, too, Mark Twain’s tale of Americans on the Grand Tour, “Innocents Abroad.” It was, Twain wrote, “a brave conception; it was the offspring of a most ingenious brain.” Yet after enduring a full suite of foreign wiles Twain lamented that “great enterprises usually promise vastly more than they perform.”
