Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged western powers to support his “victory plan” when he presented it to his country’s parliament on Wednesday, as Russia’s invasion force in the east continued to put huge pressure on Kyiv’s military.
The key elements of Mr Zelenskiy’s five-point plan call on Nato to make an immediate membership offer to Ukraine; for allies to dramatically escalate arms supplies and military co-operation with Kyiv and lift restrictions on long-range strikes inside Russia; and for Ukraine to be given a “comprehensive non-nuclear strategic deterrence package” to avert any future invasion by the Kremlin.
The plan includes three secret annexes which Mr Zelenskiy did not discuss in parliament but which he has shared with western allies in a bid to shore up their long-term backing even if next month’s US presidential election is won by Donald Trump, who has praised Russian president Vladimir Putin and claimed he could end the war in a day.
“If we start moving according to this victory plan now it may be possible to end the war no later than next year,” Mr Zelenskiy said of a conflict that began in 2014 and became Europe’s biggest war since 1945 after Russia’s full invasion in February 2022.
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“This plan can be implemented. It depends on our partners. I emphasise: on partners. It definitely does not depend on Russia …Together with our partners we must change the circumstances so that the war ends…so that Russia is forced to make peace.”
Mr Zelenskiy said bolstering Ukraine’s military power and providing it with a strategic deterrence package would help Kyiv achieve “peace through strength” by showing Russia that it is either “going to go for diplomacy or it is going to lose its war machine”.
As its troops continued to grind forward in eastern Ukraine – albeit at huge cost in lives and equipment – Russia mocked the plan and said it would change nothing. “For so many weeks there has been talk about some mythical peace plan, but it’s most likely the same American plan to fight with us to the last Ukrainian, which Zelenskiy has now camouflaged and called a ‘peace plan’,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“A real peace plan may exist for Ukraine,” he added. “This would entail the Kyiv regime recognising the futility of its current policies, accepting the need for a more realistic approach, and understanding the underlying causes that led to the ongoing conflict.”
Moscow launched its all-out invasion on the pretexts that democratic Ukraine was supposedly run by Russian-hating neo-Nazis and was to be used as a springboard for western attacks on Russia. Now Mr Putin says it must accept permanent Kremlin annexation of five of its regions and abandon its Nato membership bid forever; Mr Zelenskiy has ruled out territorial concessions, however.
There has been no indication from Washington or other western capitals that they will grant Mr Zelenskiy’s requests, having repeatedly emphasised the need to avoid “escalation” with Moscow and the risk of a direct clash between Nato and Russia.
Mr Zelenskiy also told parliament that North Korea was now sending weapons, factory workers and soldiers to Russia to boost its war effort: “In fact, this is the participation of a second state in the war against Ukraine on the side of Russia,” he said.
Russia claimed to have captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, amid heavy fighting inside the small but strategic city of Toretsk and mounting pressure on Kyiv’s forces near the border in Kharkiv region, where residents of the small city of Kupiansk have been ordered to evacuate due to intense shelling.
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