“Peace is closer than we think,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in September on his trip to the United States. “We must take decisive action [en el campo de batalla] to end the war no later than 2025,” the Ukrainian president said last Wednesday from Croatia. Zelensky is carrying out his umpteenth diplomatic marathon this week to present his “plan for victory” to the main European powers. The Ukrainian president wants to agree with Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy and the United States on this document of military decisions that should put his country in a position of strength to negotiate with the Russian Vladimir Putin. The plan must be agreed upon before the end of 2024. Otherwise, Zelensky said during his visit to the White House in September, Ukraine will have no chance of winning the war.
Zelensky met this Thursday morning in London with the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, and the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte. Subsequently, he went to Paris to meet with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and at the last minute he arrived in Rome to meet with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. On Friday he will meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. This intense agenda is the alternative that the Ukrainian president’s office has found to replace the cancellation of the NATO summit dedicated to aid to Ukraine that was to be held starting October 10 in Germany. The event, which was to be a solemn European farewell ceremony for Joe Biden, has been postponed because the American president decided not to travel to be in his country during the devastating hurricane. Milton.
The Ukrainian leader will also meet with Pope Francis on Friday in Rome. The Vatican and the Ukrainian Government maintain a tense relationship after multiple statements by the Pontiff that have been interpreted as favorable to Russia. The last one, in August, was a homily in which the Pope harshly criticized the new Ukrainian regulation that outlaws the Orthodox Church faithful to the Moscow Patriarchate. Diplomacy with the Holy See is key for Zelensky because in many Latin American countries with a Catholic majority there is more proximity to Russia than to Ukraine.
Plan for victory
The “plan for victory”, as Zelensky has baptized it, is a document that has been kept secret and that the Ukrainian president revealed to Biden, to his vice president and candidate in the next US elections, Kamala Harris, and also to the candidate Republican, Donald Trump. Now it will do the same with the main NATO powers in Europe with the aim of developing it jointly and approving it before the next president of the United States takes office. This plan has been confirmed to propose the incorporation of kyiv into NATO in the short term and Washington’s permission to use long-range weapons in Russian territory.
The chances of Ukraine joining the Atlantic Alliance in the coming months, as Zelensky suggests, are minimal, as European leaders such as the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, have indicated in recent days. This could mean a direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia. An alternative, as sources from the president’s office have leaked to the Ukrainian media, would be to agree on a special security agreement. kyiv assumes that sooner or later they will receive the American green light to use NATO members’ long-range rockets ATACMS, Storm Shadow and Scalp on Russian territory. Biden, so far, has shown no signs of changing his mind. Scholz has reiterated that Germany will not supply its Taurus missiles to hit Russia.
Stubb said on September 27 that before joining NATO, Ukraine had to join the EU. And this is another obstacle for Ukraine. Zelensky and his Prime Minister, Denis Shmihal, have indicated this summer that they believe Ukraine will be ready to join the EU in record time, in 2025. But European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Zelensky in kyiv on September 20 that the European legislature that has just begun, and which lasts five years, must serve to prepare Ukraine for access to the community club.
Zelensky has also put his effort into reaching a consensus with more than 80 countries on his so-called Peace Formula. The Ukrainian leader explained on Wednesday in Croatia, where a summit was held with Southeast European countries, that his intention is to have this joint proposal ready in November to end the war. The Kremlin has ruled out taking it into account because it has not participated in its drafting and is committed to the peace initiative led by China and Brazil.
The Ukrainian president explained after his meeting with Starmer and Rutte the relationship between the plan for victory and the Peace Formula, which must be concluded at a Peace Summit that kyiv wants to be held this year: “The plan for victory seeks to create the correct conditions for a just end to the war. It is a bridge to the second Summit for Peace. “Ukraine can only negotiate from a strong position.” Starmer has assured that for his Government it is “very important to demonstrate continued commitment to supporting Ukraine.” The British premier has limited himself to commenting that he will study the plan for victory in detail. Macron confirmed that they analyzed the measures to be taken for “the coming weeks and months”, although without specifying their content. The French president stressed his “unwavering support for Ukraine” in the military and diplomatic fields.
The question now is what Zelensky means by a victory in war. There are more and more voices in European foreign ministries who consider that the time has come for Ukraine to assume that Russia will control part of its territory, even temporarily. This was said in September by the Czech president, Petr Pavel, and this was indicated by NATO sources to the Bloomberg agency on October 8. Both Pavel and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock suggested in September that victory for Ukraine involves a long-term security plan with its allies to safeguard and strengthen the 70% of the country that is not in Russian hands.
Zelensky stated after his meeting with Macron, as reported by the AFP agency, that they did not talk about the possibility of accepting a ceasefire with Russia in exchange for defense guarantees from NATO, as several media outlets have published in recent weeks. international. “We have not talked about truces, I have seen it in the media, but it is clear what is happening, we already know that Russia works a lot with disinformation among the media,” said the Ukrainian president.
