US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hopped on a plane to Europe this week to do three things.
He wanted to assure Ukraine the US would support it in the face of Russian military threats; rally support among US allies for a unified, aggressive response if needed; and sit down with his Russian counterpart to find a diplomatic solution - or at least show the US was not giving up on diplomacy.
It was clearly a hastily-arranged trip.
US officials had only two days' notice to prepare a day full of meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Foreign Secretary Dmytro Kuleba, as well as with concerned staff at the US embassy.
Throughout, Mr Blinken hammered the same message: the US stood by Ukraine.
Russia had a stark choice between "diplomacy and dialogue" on one hand and "conflict and consequences" on the other, he said. By the end of that long first day, it seemed like the US was making progress.
Then President Joe Biden did a rhetorical belly-flop in the middle of the diplomatic pool overnight.
Media caption,
During a nearly two-hour press conference, he said the US would surely argue with its allies over how to respond to a "minor incursion" by Russia into Ukraine - and that he thought it was probable that Russia would "go in" to Ukraine.
Those views left heads nodding in foreign policy circles. But when it comes to diplomacy, some truths are best left unsaid...BBC
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