President Donald Trump’s desire to negotiate a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine is a moral one. Ukraine is likely to make painful concessions to secure peace as long as Russia knows any future attempt to invade Ukraine will mean conflict with American-supported European ground forces.

Still, Trump is very badly wrong to suggest that Ukraine started this war and bears responsibility for failing to resolve it peacefully before now. Trump did exactly that on Tuesday. First, the president criticized Ukraine over its lament that it was not invited to U.S. talks with Russia in Saudi Arabia. To be fair to Trump, those talks were designed to gain insight into Russian negotiating expectations and not facilitate direct talks between Ukraine and Russia. Those talks will come later.