Zelensky is angry! He is fuming at the US like a kettle on full boil. The reason: His so-called victory plan for the Ukraine war has been rejected by the West. And now he’s so angry that he has decided to cancel the upcoming peace summit in November and continue fighting Russia. All in all, it means that the future of the conflict is now very much up in the air.
Let’s start with the victory plan first. Zelensky went to the US last week to present it to US leader Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The title of the document speaks for itself – it’s apparently Kyiv’s strategy for defeating Russia, and it consists of four or five not entirely comprehensible points.
So, what went wrong?
The Americans and Western Europeans expected Kiev to present them with a clear vision of victory and a roadmap for achieving it. Instead, Zelensky brought a list of “demands” that the US and EU should fulfill.
Number 1 demand: The West should ramp up financial and economic aid to Kyiv.
Number 2 demand: Ukraine should be allowed into NATO and EU.
Number 3 demand: West should allow long-range missile strikes deep into Russia.
The list, which looked more like a to-do list for the West and less like a victory plan, turned off Washington DC big time.
On Tuesday, the White House announced that Biden would not meet Zelensky in Germany as previously scheduled. They said Biden was busy dealing with Hurricane Milton. Zelensky and Biden were supposed to discuss the ‘victory plan’ on October 12th.
After this snub from the West, Zelensky is now seemingly working on the PLAN B.
In Plan B, Zelensky plans to continue fighting as before, with limited Western aid and instead relying more on domestic resources. The idea is to hold out against Russian assault until the next administration takes the charge in January. If Kamala Harris wins the polls, Zelensky’s war machinery may get a new boost.
But Kyiv should have enough resources for that. At this moment, no one except supreme leader Zelensky knows where exactly Ukraine is faring in terms of stockpile. Ukraine has anyway turned into black-hole, with no transparency regarding how the Western aid and military assets are being used.
So now that Ukraine has decided to continue the fighting, Zelensky has dropped the idea of holding a peace summit in November.
A senior advisor to Zelensky said Tuesday that the summit is unlikely to go ahead as planned.
Zelensky said in September that Russian representatives should be invited to the second peace summit, adding that his country’s “victory plan” would be the starting point for and the foundation of any talks with Russia.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova immediately poured cold water on peace prospects in September by saying that Russia would not take part in a second peace summit. The first peace summit, which Moscow was not invited to attend, was held in Switzerland with much fanfare in June, despite a lack of obvious results.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had earlier laid out a set of terms for a ceasefire with Ukraine in June, which featured “denazification” and a legally binding rejection of membership in NATO.