There were great expectations preceding the Vladimir Putin-Xi Jinping summit last week that their meeting in Moscow would see them announce Xi’s brokering of peace between Ukraine and Russia, based on a peace plan that China published last month. However, nothing of that sort happened. The Chinese plan had called for peace talks and although it stressed on respect for national sovereignty, it did not make an explicit call for Russia to vacate occupied Ukrainian territories. At a joint news conference after their meeting, Putin said that “many provisions of the Chinese peace plan can be taken as the basis...