Donald Trump’s decision to go to war in the Middle East has dealt a huge blow to Ukraine. It rescued Russia from a budget crisis, strained Kyiv’s debt-laden benefactors in Europe, ripped through stocks of critical US weapons that Ukraine’s now less likely to receive and prompted the White House to — yet again — press Volodymyr Zelenskiy to accept Russia’s territorial demands.

So, why does Ukraine’s embattled president seem so unfazed?

There are, no doubt, a lot of reasons, but one is that Ukraine has been manufacturing cards to play ever since the American president told Zelenskiy a year ago that he had none. Another is the substantial loss of US leverage over Kyiv, simply because it now offers so much less that it can threaten to take away.

At the time of that now infamous Oval Office ambush, Zelenskiy’s meek reaction seemed to cruelly expose the extent of his country’s dependence on US support for its survival. As recently as November, he gave an anguished address telling Ukrainians that they might soon face one of the most difficult choices in their history: Capitulate to Russia’s terms or lose an indispensable US ally.

That anguish is hard to detect today. Now, as the White House again presses Kyiv to accept Russia’s demand that it hand over the so-called fortress belt of cities that has for four years been key to stemming Russian advances, Zelenskiy has pushed back in public. He said the US was tying its offer of security guarantees to his implementation of Russia's territorial ultimatum.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was clearly taken aback and called Zelenskiy a liar. He also said the door was open to........

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