kyiv, Ukraine (AP) — The victory plan that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will present to the White House this week asks the Biden administration to do something it hasn’t accomplished in two and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine: Act quickly to support the Kyiv campaign.
As Western procrastination has magnified Ukraine’s losses, some Ukrainian officials, diplomats and analysts fear that kyiv may be willing to implement the plan before the end of the year. a new american president Donald Trump’s inauguration in January may be out of reach.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who was reportedly briefed on the plan, said it “could work” but that many were privately wondering how.
Details of Zelenskyy’s plan have been kept secret until it can be formally presented to President Joe Biden, but the outlines of the plan appeared, including the need to act quickly on decisions that Western allies have been considering since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
According to Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andrii Yermak, this option includes the security guarantee of NATO membership, a key demand of kyiv and a major point of contention between Moscow and Western allies, including the United States, who are skeptical about this option.
Zelenskyy said he would also seek permission to use long range weapons strike deep into Russian territory, another red line for some supporters of Ukraine.
“Partners often say: ‘We will stand with Ukraine until its victory.’ Now we are clearly showing how Ukraine can win and what is needed for this. Very concrete things,” Zelensky told reporters ahead of the trip. “Let’s do all this today, while all the officials who want Ukraine to win are still in official positions.”
Meanwhile, outnumbered Ukrainian forces are facing fierce fighting against one of the world’s most powerful armies to the east. As Zelensky has said presents his plan to Biden On Thursday, the Ukrainian military will work to maintain the defensive lines of the key logistics point of Vuhledar in the Donetsk region. For some of them, it is essential that Biden adheres to Zelensky’s plan.
“I hope the allies will provide us with what we need,” said Kyanin, a soldier fighting in the Donetsk region. “Not 10 or 31 tanks, but a thousand tanks, thousands of weapons and ammunition.”
Kyiv sets conditions
The victory plan is Kiev’s response to growing pressure from Western allies and war-weary Ukrainians to negotiate a ceasefire. A deal with Russia would almost certainly be unfavourable to Ukraine, which has lost a fifth of its territory and tens of thousands of lives in the conflict.
Unless kyiv reacts quickly, its Western partners will not act. Ukraine’s allies have regularly considered requests for weapons and abilities, Often granted after their strategic value has diminished, they are expected to significantly strengthen kyiv’s position from October to December.
The plan includes military, political, diplomatic and economic elements.
A senior U.S. State Department official said the Ukrainians were “testing” some elements of Zelensky’s plan with the United States and other countries, but had not yet provided details or the proposal in its entirety. Any decision on whether to support parts or the entire plan will be up to Biden, the official said on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York.
The official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss private consultations with the Ukrainians, said the military element of the plan addresses what Ukraine believes it needs in the short term to keep pressure on Russia and hopefully force it to the negotiating table.
The political element is how to assure the Ukrainian people that they will be welcome in Western institutions like the European Union and NATO if they continue to fight with Russia or if they manage to reach a negotiated settlement with Russia, the official said.
In addition to seeking NATO membership, the plan aims to strengthen Ukraine’s defenses, including its air defense capabilities, enough to force Moscow to negotiate.
A demand for intensified sanctions to weaken the Russian economy and defense industry is also expected.
Zelensky said, without elaborating, that kyiv’s military incursion into Kursk, Russia, was part of the plan for victory. The offensive, which embarrassed President Vladimir Putin as the Kremlin struggled to counterattack, did not yield strategic gains. But it showed the Russian public and its skeptical Western allies that Russia is not invincible and that kyiv still has offensive capabilities despite the difficulties it has suffered on the Eastern Front.
The cost of inaction
Zelensky described his proposal as “a bridge to the peace summit” he proposed for November but which Russia has said it will not attend. No international actor capable of changing Moscow’s mind has accepted his previous 10-point peace plan, which calls for a complete withdrawal of Russian forces.
Ukrainian presidential aides and lawmakers told The Associated Press that kyiv would agree to a cease-fire with Russia only if Putin’s ability to invade the country again was hampered. Any other arrangement would not benefit Ukraine’s future or honor the sacrifices of its people.
Ukrainian officials have rejected competing proposals from China and Brazil, saying they would only pause the war and give Moscow time to shore up its military and defense industry.
“This will lead to a freezing of the conflict, nothing more: the occupied territories are considered occupied. Sanctions against Russia remain. The intensity of the war is decreasing significantly, but it continues,” said a presidential adviser, who requested anonymity to speak freely.
He predicted that Moscow would reorient itself and attack again, probably from Mykolaiv and Odessa to the south, “within two, three, four years, or maybe even sooner, depending on the state of Russia. That’s the prevailing scenario.”
Russia’s conditions for ending the war are specified in a 17-page draft agreement written in April 2022.
The time element
Prolonging the status quo would only work in Russia’s favor in the long run, analysts say.
“Ukraine will lose more than 1,000 square kilometers by the end of the year” if current conditions continue, said Oleksandr Kovalenko, a military analyst at Information Resistance, a kyiv-based think tank. “We have to understand that if (the allies) don’t defend Ukraine, it will prolong this war for many more years, and ultimately, it will allow us to lose the war,” he said.
Time will also allow Russian forces to develop their arms industry, as they did at a frightening pace last year, Kovalenko said.
“We lack all types of weapons, and Russia produces its weapons around the clock,” Kovalenko said.
Russia has modernized its gliding aerial bombs, against which Ukraine has no effective countermeasures. They now weigh 1,360 kilograms, six times more than when they were first used in the Battle of Bakhmut in 2022, he said.
Soldiers in eastern Ukraine and analysts said Western long-range weapons This would be the most effective countermeasure against the gliding bombs that were deployed along the front line, especially at Vuhledar. The fall of the mining town would compromise the supply lines of the southern front and deal a devastating blow to Ukrainian morale.
In his final speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Biden urged Ukraine’s supporters to stand firm.
“We cannot get tired,” he said. “We cannot look away.”
___
Associated Press journalists Tony Hicks and Volodymyr Yurchuk in kyiv and Matthew Lee in New York contributed to this report.
