1 week Ago By Chris Summers
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to unveil part of his “victory plan” to his country’s Parliament on Oct. 16. Zelenskyy has discussed the strategy with U.
S. President Joe Biden and several other Western leaders but none of the details have emerged. The plan—which is believed to be a mixture of military, political, diplomatic and economic strategies—is designed to bolster Ukrainian morale and garner more support from NATO.
Zelenskyy has visited several Western leaders in recent weeks in a bid to get support for the victory plan but he has yet to get open endorsements for its key points. The conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran has distracted the Biden administration, which also has one eye on the Nov. 5 presidential election.
Republican nominee, and former U.S. President Donald Trump, has said he would end the war quickly and has hinted at a deal between Russia and Ukraine, while the Democrat nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has suggested she would continue Biden’s policy of supporting the Ukrainian war effort indefinitely.
After Ukraine pulled troops out of its eastern front to launch an incursion into Russian territory near Kursk in the summer, the Russians made significant advances on the weakened frontline and are getting close to taking the vital logistics hub of Pokrovsk. Rutte visited NATO’s Ukraine mission in Wiesbaden, Germany on Oct. 14 and said, “The message [to Russian President Vladimir Putin] is that we will continue, that we will do what’s necessary to make sure that he will not get his way, that Ukraine will prevail.
” Zelenskyy’s political adviser, Serhii Leshchenko, suggested the victory plan would be fully revealed to Parliament but other officials in Kyiv have said the most sensitive parts would not be divulged. Ukraine has lost a fifth of its territory and tens of thousands of lives in the conflict and without a military victory it would be unable to recover the Donbas, Crimea or the swathe of territory between Melitopol and Kherson. Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s top adviser, said one element of the victory plan is speeding up Ukraine’s accession to NATO.
Ukraine argues that if it were in NATO it would be protected from any future invasion by Russia, but Biden and other Western leaders appear lukewarm on the idea. The plan may also include allowing Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia with NATO-supplied long-range missiles and beefing up Ukraine’s air defenses, along with more economic sanctions against Russia. Zelenskyy has said Ukraine’s military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region was also part of the victory plan.
He said the 386 square miles of territory which was captured by Ukraine would serve as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia. In recent weeks Brazil and China have been pushing a peace plan. On Sept.
27 China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and Brazilian Foreign Policy Adviser Celso Amorim, co-hosted a meeting at the U.N. in New York which was attended by 17 countries, including Turkey and Indonesia.
Wang said afterwards, “Russia and Ukraine are neighbors that cannot be moved away from each other and amity is the only realistic option.” But Zelenskyy told the U.N.
General Assembly the “alternatives, half-hearted settlement plans, so-called sets of principles” contained in the China/Brazil plan would just help Moscow. China and Russia signed a “no limits” agreement, three weeks before Moscow invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022.
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