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The European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, refused to say whether she thought Russia was adhering to the Minsk pact. She said European leaders won’t make a judgment until July, when the next decision on EU sanctions is due, and that she was working to ease sanctions against Russia.

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“We decided more than one year ago that … the only way of putting pressure on Russia was the economic one,” she said. “I wish we could lift the sanctions soon, but it depends on the situation on the ground in Ukraine.”

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Russian parliament’s international affairs committee, denied that any Russian troops are in Ukraine. “We are not sending troops into neighboring country. Mr. Breedlove believes we do. But we do not,” he said, evoking scoffs from the mostly European and American audience.

Breedlove and Nuland are fighting an uphill battle. Obama has said arming Kyiv would be seen as an escalation and would unsettle the situation on the ground. Yet NATO’s evidence shows that Russia is changing the status quo every day. So it’s not arming Kyiv that makes keeping the balance between the two sides impossible, raising the chances of greater violence.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, was highly critical of the West’s approach. “We have signaled a willingness to accommodate,” he said. “I’m not sure that, at this stage, we have succeeded in convincing the Russians that we are prepared to deter the kind of steps they are adopting.”

If Obama doesn’t want to give arms to Ukraine’s military, he will have to find another way to turn up the heat on Putin. Some in Congress, along with State Department and White House officials, are preparing new sanctions measures. Yet while the White House waits for Europe to agree to either option, we get paralysis that plays into Putin’s hands.

— Josh Rogin is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes about national security and foreign affairs.