Life in Ukraine, a country which lies shoulder to shoulder with Russia and scores high on an international scale of corruption, requires desperate measures. Last spring, voters elected a television actor who played the role of president as president, in the chance that an unconventional leader could negotiate an end to Vladimir Putin’s forceful efforts to reintegrate Ukraine into Russia’s orbit and put the country on a more ethical keel.

Volodymyr Zelensky could not have imagined that the president of the United States, whose support could add immense credibility to his legitimacy as president and his fight against the Russians, would put his own political needs first.

The aid which Ukraine needed was not to ill the ranks of a military parade on a sunny weekend day but to stand up as best as possible in the trenches to a force that wore no identifying unit patches and outfitted mercenaries, and downed a passenger airliner. Ukrainians are dying; sniper rifles were among the aid.

If Putin succeeds in smothering all or parts of Ukraine, as he has in Crimea, other former Russian republics will be lined up to be targets to be rewoven into his reconstituted empire.