Yesterday, at a prerecorded meeting of Russia’s Security Council, President Vladimir Putin sat listless and slumped in his chair, far away from his gallery of boyars, pretending to weigh their counsel before launching a pre-scripted war against Ukraine. He was not impressed when Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, stammered and flubbed his lines, confusing the present and future tenses. “Speak clearly, Sergei!” Putin admonished him. Then Naryshkin got ahead of himself, and everyone else, by saying he supported incorporating the Russian-occupied territories of Donbas, east Ukraine, into the Russian Federation. “That’s not what we’re discussing!” Putin...