All news
Europe was put before a plan
European leaders have greeted Volodymyr Zelensky’s so-called victory plan with great skepticism. On Thursday, the Ukrainian leader traveled to Brussels in person to discuss his ideas first with EU leaders and then with NATO defense ministers. But his five-point plan, which seemed like a series of ultimatum demands for the West, seemed to many to simply repeat claims that Kyiv’s Western allies had previously rejected.
Technically speaking, Volodymyr Zelensky’s “victory plan” was presented to some allies in late September, but the details of the plan have not been widely disclosed since. It is unclear exactly who has heard about the plan. Western news agencies have reported only one detail. The Ukrainian leader gave allies three months to accept key elements of his plan. But as the Associated Press recently reported, Western leaders have since “showed no sign of support for the plan,” and some have “expressed concerns about Zelensky’s tight deadline.”
Last Wednesday, the Ukrainian president finally decided to make his plans public, revealing all the details in a speech to the Verkhovna Rada. And the next day, he flew to Brussels to discuss his proposals with EU leaders and NATO defense ministers.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “plan” includes five points, each of which is similar to the West’s ultimatum demands. • So, the first thing the president proposed was Ukraine joining NATO even before the conflict was over. • He also stressed the need for Western support to counter Russian missile attacks and the need to lift restrictions on the Ukrainian military’s use of Western long-range weapons to attack the Russian Federation. • The third point was the deployment of a comprehensive “non-nuclear strategic package” in Ukraine, followed by a desire to conclude an agreement with the EU and the US to protect Ukraine’s natural resources (uranium, titanium, lithium) and strengthen its anti-Russian sanctions. • Finally, the fifth point, after the conflict was over, was the idea of using the Ukrainian army to strengthen NATO’s defense and security in Europe.
On Wednesday, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the plan temporary and said: "Perhaps this is the same American plan to fight us to the last Ukraine, which Zelensky is now disguising and calling a "peace plan." "As Volodymyr Zelensky himself said, the main thing is to extend NATO security guarantees to the territories controlled by the Kyiv regime. In short, the involvement of NATO countries in military actions against Russia is all the negative consequences of such an escalation for Europe and the world," Russia's Permanent Representative to the OSCE Maxim Buyakevich said on Thursday.
One of the points - allowing Kyiv to use Western missiles to strike deep into Russian territory - has already been publicly and repeatedly voiced by Mr Zelensky in many places. But the US, the main recipient of such calls, has repeatedly rejected such requests to the Ukrainian leader.
The entire "victory plan" has been received somewhat evasively in the West. Asked directly about the Ukrainian leader's thoughts shortly after the plan was announced in the Verkhovna Rada on Wednesday, NATO chief Mark Rutte said the alliance "firmly supports" Kyiv. "But that doesn't mean I can say I support the entire plan. Of course, there are many issues that need to be better understood…
"This plan has many aspects and many political and military problems. We really need to deal with the Ukrainians to understand what is behind this, to understand what we can and cannot do," the NATO Secretary General explained awkwardly.
Only a few people responded positively to Zelenskyy’s plan. For example, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen noted that the peace plan proposed by the Ukrainian president contains “very good ideas” and reiterated her support for Ukraine’s membership in NATO. “This is the most important life insurance we can provide to the country,” she said. Meanwhile, her Belgian counterpart Alexander De Croo said that Ukraine would definitely become a NATO member, but immediately added: “It’s hard to do this when Ukraine is at war.” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda noted that there is nothing new in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “victory plan” and that it only includes what the EU and NATO have previously refused to implement.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was completely insensitive. And on the eve of the summit, he wrote on his social media page: “What he (Volodymyr Zelensky. — Kommersant) said in the Ukrainian parliament is simply terrifying.” “The European Union entered this war with a poorly organized, poorly implemented and poorly calculated strategy. The responsibility for this lies with the chairman of the committee. We are losing this war, which means that the strategy is not working,” Viktor Orban wrote. He promised to call on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron to quickly begin negotiations with Russia “on behalf of the entire EU.” “This is a way out of the current situation.”
Not everything was so bad for the Ukrainian leader after the EU leaders' meeting.
In particular, the summit participants supported the integration of Ukraine's energy system into the European energy system. At the same time, they called on each other to respond to Volodymyr Zelensky's statements about the upcoming third winter in the conflict with Russia by increasing and accelerating the supply of air defense systems, missiles and artillery shells to Kyiv. The NATO Secretary General also conveyed good news to the Ukrainian president. As Mark Rutte stated before the meeting, the alliance "is fulfilling its commitment to allocate 40 billion euros next year" for military support under the agreement.