On March 10 in Moscow, Ukraine’s leading Russophile politician Viktor Medved­chuk conferred with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Duma leaders about adding an “inter-parliamentary dimension” to the Normandy forum (Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine), which is an inter-governmental process. The idea, credited to Mr. Medvedchuk, is to enlist interparliamentary support for decisions in the Normandy and Minsk processes on special status and elections in Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Donbas. Those decisions would then be handed down to the Verkhovna Rada for legislative enactments.

Mr. Putin gave Mr. Medvedchuk this opportunity to bypass Ukraine’s state leadership and publicly coordinate his initiative with the Kremlin. The reaction from Ukraine’s presidential team is equivocal and supine.