Volodymyr Zelensky’s ‘victory plan’ is in danger

Mary Dejevsky, The Independent

Remember when an appearance, virtual or real, by the president of Ukraine was the hottest of hot-ticket events in London? When MPs and peers jostled for a standing-room-only place in parliament to see and hear him? When the one-time TV actor turned democratically elected president turned war leader drew rapt attention with his gritty determination and allusions to Churchill? Well, those heady days of Britain reliving its finest hour by association are over. There was no fanfare on Thursday — barely an announcement, in fact — of Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest visit to London. There was a red carpet, a handshake and an embrace with Sir Keir Starmer at the famous Downing Street door. It was followed by around two hours of talks behind closed doors, which included UK military and security officials and Mark Rutte, the new Nato secretary general. Then Zelensky left for whistle-stop visits to France and Italy, before setting off back to Kyiv. As for UK media interest, the London leg of his tour was thoroughly eclipsed by coverage of a category 3 hurricane in Florida and only fleetingly reached the front page of the BBC News website.

This is not to say that the visit was entirely without significance. It offered Zelensky another opportunity to present what he calls his “victory plan” to what was probably a sympathetic audience. It was also another opportunity for the still-new UK government to express its solidarity with Ukraine. Not that this should have been necessary. Starmer had pledged even before he took office to continue the UK’s full-throated support for Zelensky in his efforts to drive the Russian invader out of Ukraine. The defence secretary, John Healey, went to Odesa within hours of taking office. Starmer himself held one-to-one meetings with Zelensky both at the Nato summit in Washington in July, then just a few days later with the full cabinet at Downing Street after the European Political Community summit at Blenheim.

The latest meeting, in effect, merely amplified existing messages. It signalled that the UK’s moral support is still strong — that Nato remains as committed to Ukraine under Rutte as it was under his predecessor, Jens Stoltenberg, and that Nato membership for Ukraine remains a goal, one the UK supports. That said, it is hard not to observe that over the summer, some of the fervour has gone out of the UK’s enthusiasm for Ukraine. And that is not just because Starmer is no Boris Johnson, who still seems to occupy a small place in Zelensky’s heart — after all, Zelensky has had to deal with a good few UK prime ministers since Johnson. It is also because Zelensky is finding it a lot more difficult to press his case for ever more Western support with ever fewer strings attached.

This is partly because of the nature of the case. Over the two and a half years of the war, Zelensky has requested, and eventually received, ever more sophisticated weapons with an ever longer range over initial Western objections. His current request is to use UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia — a move Moscow warns it would view as direct UK involvement. Even if it would seem (astonishingly) that there are senior politicians in the UK who would relish a confrontation with Russia, there are many in France, Germany and Italy who most certainly would not.

Another reason why some of the enthusiasm for Ukraine may be fading concerns the state of the war. The days of heroic Ukrainians notching up victory after victory against the superpower aggressor are ever fewer and further between. Ukraine has been losing ground in the Donbas in the east and the fate of Kyiv’s incursion into the Kursk region of Russia is unclear. One way or another, the battlefield advantage would appear to lie with Russia. A further reason stems from politics elsewhere. While support for Ukraine remains fiercely resolute in many “front line” states of central and Eastern Europe, enthusiasm has been waning in countries further west. That includes Germany, where opposition to the war has been growing, partly because of the financial cost and partly because of what is seen as the risk to regional peace. It could also include the UK, where, even in the absence of a public debate, critics note the apparent blank cheque for Ukraine, compared with the sacrifices being demanded by the government at home to plug the multibillion-pound “black hole” in the nation’s finances.

But it is the United States that is the decisive player here. The awkward truth is that were Germany or the UK (the second and third largest donors to Ukraine) to halt their supplies tomorrow, that would make a dent in its capability but it would not by itself incapacitate Ukraine. Were the United States to stop or seriously curtail its assistance, however, it would only be a matter of time before Ukraine was seriously constrained. And the US — which is in the throes of a close election, and simultaneously preoccupied with the multi-front conflict in the Middle East — has been reluctant to sign off on anything that might extend the Ukraine war further into Russia or make the US or its allies a direct target. That it is the US, and only the US, that will decide on the use of Storm Shadow and US ATACMS missiles far into Russia was the reason for last month’s apparently failed UK mission to change Washington’s mind. Starmer took senior ministers with him to meetings in Washington but returned empty-handed. As did Zelensky from his visits to New York and Washington in and around the UN General Assembly.

If, as is supposed, strikes into Russia are a key element of Zelensky’s “victory plan”, there appears to be little prospect of change on this front. Nor does there appear to be any change in President Biden’s very conspicuous reluctance to sign off on accelerated Nato membership for Ukraine, which is believed to be the other main component of the “victory plan”. It is not clear whether Zelensky’s mini-tour of Europe was scheduled or whether it was, in fact, a last-minute replacement for a long-planned meeting of Ukraine and leaders of its Western allies at Ramstein — the US military base near Frankfurt in Germany — that was to have been held yesterday. In further evidence of how central the US is to any decision on Ukraine policy, that meeting was postponed and is now believed to have been cancelled, after Biden pulled out.

The official reason was that Hurricane Milton restricted travel and the president needed to be in Washington to handle any disaster. However, the abandonment of the Ramstein meeting surely suited those opposed to any move that might be seen as escalating the war in Ukraine, and effectively places Zelensky’s “victory plan” on perhaps indefinite hold. It is hard to envisage President Biden making any major decision on Ukraine before the election, and it is practice for an outgoing president to do nothing that would bind the hands of his successor during the transition. That takes everyone to mid-January.

Zelensky’s “victory plan” may or may not be realistic. But he could now be facing an acute race against time. The odds are that it is now unlikely to be considered, let alone approved, before either the new US president is in place or Russia’s gains call into question the rationale for Ukraine fighting on — whichever happens first. The alternative would be high-risk unilateral action, with all that could entail.