Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted out his new plan for ending the Ukraine war today. The five points, in order, are:
- An “unconditional invitation” to join NATO;
- Fulfillment, in its entirety, of Ukraine’s shopping list for Western weapons;
- A classified demand for “deterrence” of Russia to include “a comprehensive non-nuclear strategic deterrence package that will be sufficient to protect Ukraine from any military threat from Russia”;
- The protection of Ukrainian “critical resources,” to include a US/EU-signed “special agreement for the joint protection of” same; and,
- After the war, the “replacement of certain US military contingents stationed in Europe with Ukrainian units.”
If anyone was hoping for a more realistic plan than Zelensky’s 2022 10-point plan, there’s not much to go on here. He appears to have relented on getting Russian President Vladimir Putin into the hoosegow in the Hague, but otherwise what Zelensky is asking for almost certainly will not be forthcoming.
The place to start in evaluating this plan is with a brutal but unavoidable fact: Ukraine is losing the war at present. The Kursk incursion produced a fleeting moment of euphoria but failed to divert enough Russian troops from Ukrainian territory to ease the conflict there. Russian forces continue to adapt, making slow advances in a grinding war of attrition across the four Ukrainian oblasts it now claims. Given Ukraine’s inherent disadvantages in population, economic size, and military power, the longer the war continues, the worse it becomes for Ukraine. And it does not look likely to end any time soon.
Meanwhile, the new initiative comes amid softening support for Ukraine. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R‑LA) recently announced he doesn’t “have an appetite for further Ukraine funding.” (Zelensky’s recent visit to a munitions plant in Pennsylvania with campaigning Democrats may not have helped him.) American elite and public attention remain fixed on Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon, and even in Europe support for Ukraine is growing wobbly. Amid deep economic woes, both France and Germany recently announced significant cuts in aid to Kyiv.
It will be impossible to represent the war as having been worth the cost of fighting if Ukraine does not achieve security guarantees from Washington, whether via NATO or otherwise. But the Biden administration has (rightly) opposed Ukrainian NATO accession, and former President Trump made clear on the All In podcast that he would never fight Russia over Ukraine.
The new plan looks like Zelensky is still asking for everything in the hope he can achieve everything. While his and Putin’s plans both appear far from what is achievable, the question remains who can tolerate the pain longer? One hopes Zelensky has more realistic hopes that he expresses behind closed doors, but his new plan doesn’t offer much more to go on than his old one did.