“I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV,” President Trump declares today after an attack on Ukraine’s capital, adding: “Vladimir, STOP!” Hours later, Mr. Trump avers that Mr. Putin had aided the cause of peace by “stopping taking the whole country, pretty big concession.” What of Mr. Trump’s goal to end the war “in one day?” It echoes the famous scene in “Inherit the Wind” between William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow.

Bryan is quizzed on the teaching that God made the sun on the fourth day. “That first day, what do you think, it was 24 hours long?” asks Darrow. “I don’t know,” Bryan replies. So “25 hours?” Darrow asks. Bryan concedes: “It’s possible.” Darrow bellows at the befuddled Bryan: “It could’ve been 30 hours, could’ve been a week, could’ve been a month, could’ve been a year, could’ve been a hundred years, or it could’ve been 10 million years!!”

It’s not our intention here to belittle William Jennings Bryan — or Mr. Trump’s ambitions to forge a peace in Europe, only to underscore the scale of the challenge. The war, no doubt, “should have never started,” as he puts it, and its cost in terms of blood and treasure is appalling. Peace talks are ongoing. Yet while Kyiv has proven itself, as its arm is twisted, to be amenable to a ceasefire, the Kremlin is emerging as the principal roadblock to a pact. 

It’s reached the point where even the French appear to have a more hawkish view on the dispute than the Americans. President Macron is urging Mr. Putin to “stop lying” about his intentions being pacific, even as some 12 civilians were killed overnight at Kyiv. “There is only one answer we are waiting for: Does President Putin agree to an unconditional ceasefire?” says Monsieur Macron on a trip to Madagascar. 

Monsieur le Président suggests, too, that “the Americans’ anger should focus on just one person: President Putin.” That would certainly mark a change from the Trump administration’s seeming aggravation with President Zelensky — who, for his own part, has not proven to be an especially adept navigator of America’s political currents. Mr. Zelensky provoked Mr. Trump’s wrath by piping up in defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty over the Crimean peninsula.

That spot of turf — “slightly larger than New Jersey,” our James Brooke notes — has been held over the centuries “by Scythians, Goths, Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Venetians, Ottomans, Soviets,  Nazi Germans, Ukrainians, and, most recently, Russians.” Mr. Putin occupied the Crimea in 2014 — on President Obama’s watch, Mr. Trump is quick to point out — and now, as part of a peace deal, Russia wants to have the seizure legitimized.

That’s a no-go for Mr. Zelensky, who says “there is nothing to discuss here.” Mr. Trump replies that “inflammatory statements” like that are what “makes it so difficult to settle this War.” It’s almost enough to suggest that the Russians and Ukrainians might not be able to resolve their differences any time soon. Their positions are so “far apart,” Mr. Brooke reports, that Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, is stressing the need for “compromise.” 

Mr. Duda reckons that “neither side will be able to say that it won this war, because each side in some sense will have to step down.” As the diplomatic impasse echoes the stalemate on the frontline, Kyiv’s European allies claim they are willing to take up the burden of aiding Ukraine’s fight for independence, even as Mr. Trump and his aides talk of abandoning the peace effort. Are they beginning to recognize that there are only so many hours in a day?