This post is only for paid subscribers of Aaron Mate. Thank you for your support. Zelensky’s 'Victory Plan' is a sign of defeatAfter once warning that Western proxy warriors are willing to see "the demise of Ukraine" in order to bleed Russia, Zelensky faces the consequences of heeding their demands.
In late March 2022, as Ukrainian and Russian negotiators made progress on a peace treaty to end the then-month-old Russian invasion of his country, Volodymyr Zelensky took note of an obstacle from afar. “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives,” the Ukrainian president told The Economist. “This is definitely in the interests of some countries.” Zelensky’s assessment was confirmed the following month, when UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson informed him that Ukraine’s chief Western sponsors opposed the agreement that Russia and Ukraine had drafted in Istanbul, and encouraged him to “keep fighting” instead. For reasons that he has yet to explain publicly, Zelensky chose to side with Johnson and the cynical “interests” of the allied Western proxy warriors he had warned about just a few weeks prior. Having bowed to sponsors willing to preside over “the demise of Ukraine” for their goal of “exhausting Russia,” Zelensky is now facing the abandonment that he had foreseen. Last week, Zelensky publicly unveiled his so-called “Victory Plan”, which he billed as a path to force Russia into ending the war on terms favorable to Ukraine. Zelensky made no secret that his road to “Victory” relies entirely on his Western sponsors. “This plan can be implemented,” Zelensky said in a national address. “It depends on our partners. I emphasize: on partners.” Indeed, Zelensky’s “Victory Plan” renews his longstanding demand for Ukraine’s accelerated membership into NATO, and for US permission to carry out long-range strikes inside Russia. Yet both requests are already dead on arrival. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that the alliance would merely “take note” of the “Victory Plan,” a thinly veiled message that it would be ignored. The Biden administration gave a similarly tepid response. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., said that Zelensky’s Victory Plan contained what Ukrainians “already have somewhat asked for,” and would need to be reviewed for “what’s really in the realm of possible” – which, US officials made clear, is nothing new. The U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, told reporters that NATO was “not at the point right now where the alliance is talking about issuing an invitation in the short term.” The same goes for long-range strikes. Last month, both President Biden and his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, initially hinted that the US would approve the request. But Biden suddenly reversed himself after a warning from President Vladimir Putin that such a move would put Russia at war with NATO – and pleas from US intelligence and military officials who took the Kremlin leader’s threat seriously. “Right now, there is no consensus on long-range weapons,” Biden said on Friday. Biden spoke following a meeting with key European counterparts in Germany, where Zelensky was notably not invited. This slight followed Biden’s cancellation of a leader-level gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany earlier this month. The White House claimed that Biden had to remain in the US to address the impact of Hurricane Milton, which decimated southeastern areas. But Biden’s muted response to Zelensky’s “Victory Plan” suggests that the White House is in fact trying to distance himself from the US-made disaster in Ukraine. The summit’s cancellation, the New York Times noted, was “a blow to Mr. Biden’s effort to use the final stretch of his presidency to remind the world — and the American public — of the importance of supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and how he was the leader of that effort.” Yet with Ukraine continuing to lose ground to Russia on the eastern front as well as in the Russian border area of Kursk, all while running out of troops to reverse the tide, Biden and election-weary Democrats may also be trying to avoid any reminders of their pet proxy war in Ukraine. Indeed, whereas “Zelensky’s team tried to persuade Biden to support the victory plan as a way to solidify Biden’s legacy before his term ends,” the Washington Post reported, “...the White House is unlikely to take any action now that could be unpopular so as to not jeopardize Kamala Harris’s campaign, officials said.” To illustrate US discomfort with an unpopular proxy war, the Ramstein meeting has now been rescheduled to be held virtually. The Biden administration is therefore not only denying Zelensky his key demands, but even a routine photo opportunity. Left stranded by his Western allies, Zelensky is sounding increasingly desperate. Last week, Zelensky suggested that if Ukraine does not receive NATO membership, then it would pursue nuclear weapons. “Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and that will be our protection or we should have some sort of alliance,” he said. “Apart from NATO, today we do not know any effective alliances.” Zelensky later walked back his remark, and stressed that Ukraine is not seeking nuclear weapons. But he was not alone in threatening that path. According to the German outlet Bild, an unidentified senior Ukrainian official “specializing in weapons procurement” reportedly said earlier this year that Ukraine could build a nuclear bomb within weeks. “We have the material, we have the knowledge. If the order is given, we will only need a few weeks to have the first bomb,” the official reportedly said. The West should “think less about Russia's red lines and more about our red lines,” the official added. Beyond making nuclear threats, the Ukrainian government has also accused North Korea of deploying ground troops to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine, without presenting a shred of evidence. As Zelensky scrambles for a Western bailout, his proxy war sponsors can only offer him more of the same: demanding Ukrainian sacrifice. According to presidential adviser Serhii Leshchenko, a bipartisan chorus of US politicians is “putting pressure on President Zelensky” to lower the draft age to 18, “as was the case in the USA during the Vietnam War.” Zelensky has so far resisted their pressure, Leshchenko added. Should Zelensky maintain that position, it would mark a rare deviation from the path that has brought him to this point: bowing to the demands of Western proxy warriors despite knowing full well that they are willing to presiding over his country’s demise. |