Volodymyr, you need a better script than your victory plan. For Ukraine’s sake.

Seconds after President Volodymyr Zelensky presented his victory plan, the U.S. shot it down. Ukraine’s most important allies are ignoring it. Geopolitics trump Ukraine's arguments and pain.

(Espreso - Oct. 16, 2024)

BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN

(Before anybody starts screaming that I love Vladimir Putin, let me stress that I disagree with the West’s stonewalling of Ukraine on the NATO issue and long-range missiles issue, but that is unimportant, as neither Joe Biden nor Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer or Olaf Scholz listen to me. My point with this piece is to provide a political analysis and perhaps some advice to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky from a Western point of view. Maybe to give an alternative to what the Ukrainian president hears daily?)

Read the room

Volodymyr, you used to be an actor – so you know that it’s all about reading the room, it’s all about timing, and the reception and “reviews” for your victory plan have been lousy. The previews in Washington in September bombed; true you did get applause at the opening night in Kyiv last week (but that was, of course, to be expected on home soil); and most of your other audiences around Europe have only shown polite disinterest. By now, it should be clear to you and yours that however well-liked, even admired, you are personally, your manuscript is not up to scratch. It comes across as stilted, and frankly, your delivery could sometimes be better. It makes me sad to have to tell you this, but friends tell each other the truth, right?

Sure, at the official unveiling of your victory plan on Oct. 16 in the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, the hall several times erupted in applause. This was the first public display of the whole plan, although most of the details, thanks to numerous leaks, have been known for months.

(from the website of the President of Ukraine)

Volodymyr, you have been a great wartime president, and your role cannot be overestimated; like Winston Churchill, your courage has been central in keeping your country going in the face of an invasion of a seemingly vastly superior enemy. Who can ever forget “I need ammo, not a ride”? Without the clever presentational skills of you and your team, Ukraine would have fallen off the front pages a long time ago; many of your team have been with you from your days as a highly successful comedian and impresario - politics is perception, in wartime more than ever, in the 21st century more than ever. But never mind the applause in the Ukrainian parliament last week, your more important audience is outside Ukraine, that was also clear from your speech, of course.

(from the website of the President of Ukraine)

The 5 points of your ‘Victory Plan’:

1) Ukraine receives an invitation to NATO. Immediately.

“For decades, Russia has exploited geopolitical uncertainty in Europe, specifically the fact that Ukraine is not a NATO member. And this is what tempted Russia to encroach on our security.” "We understand that NATO membership is a future goal, not an immediate one. But Putin must see that his geopolitical game is falling apart. Russians need to feel their leader has lost on the geopolitical front."

2) The allies provide Ukraine with more long-range weapons (ATACMS, Storm Shadow, and Taurus missiles), lift all restrictions on their use, boost Ukraine’s air defense, and share more satellite data and other intelligence with Ukraine. “The Russians must feel the decline of the Russian army.”

3) Ukraine’s Western allies and Ukraine establish a “comprehensive non-nuclear deterrence package” on Ukrainian territory—powerful enough to protect the country from any future military threats from Russia. The aim is that Russia realizes that it has only two options: either to engage in negotiations or to lose its war machine—“peace through strength.”

4) More and stronger Western sanctions against Russia and a special economic agreement with Ukraine for the joint protection, investment in, and use of Ukraine’s natural resources, such as uranium, titanium, lithium, etc. The aim is to increase the economic pressure on Russia and weaken the Russian economy, thus halting the invasion. “Peace through strength - economic strength.” “Russia's allies in the world must realize, know, and see that this regime has no economic future.”

5) Ukrainian soldiers partly replace American troops in Europe after the war: “After this war, Ukraine will have one of the most experienced and largest military contingents.” “If our partners agree, we envisage replacing certain military contingents of the United States Armed Forces stationed in Europe with Ukrainian units. After the war.”

Your chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, was busy briefing journalists: “The most important thing is Ukraine's invitation to NATO. This is the number one point.”

Several Ukrainian commentators remarked immediately after your speech, Volodymyr, that you are now trying to “shift responsibility on(to) the allies almost entirely. Zelensky is de facto saying to NATO: the ball is now in your court. He is also saying to his home audience: look, we have a plan, we presented a plan, if this doesn’t work, it’s not on us, it’s on them.”

But, Volodymyr, almost before your speech was over, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, had shot it to pieces, by bluntly rejecting the two main political-military points: “We are not at a point now where the Alliance is discussing extending an invitation to Ukraine in the short term,” Smith stated, and “Washington’s position on strikes deep into Russian territory has not changed.”

The very next day, both U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Sholz repeated that there is no consensus for allowing Ukraine to use Western weapons to strike deeper inside Russia: "Right now, there's no consensus for long-range weapons," said Biden.

Faced with that flat dismissal, Ukraine’s ambassador to NATO, Natalia Galibarenko's continued insistence that Ukraine wants to receive an invitation to join NATO before Biden leaves the White House frankly seemed counterproductive.

(Espreso 16 October 2024)

And let’s be honest, Volodymyr - audiences pretty much anywhere else where you have presented your so-called ‘Victory Plan’ have been less than enamored: Over the past two weeks, you have presented your plan to the leaders of all major countries in the coalition supporting Ukraine; British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italy's Giorgia Meloni. (You even met the Pope). All of them met you with the usual assurances of support - “unwavering support for Ukraine” seems to be the new favorite expression of European leaders, taking over from ‘as long as it takes’. But you found precious little concrete support for your victory plan. “Tepid reception” was a phrase used often in news reports. All the while, financial and military contributions for Ukraine are still harder to come by, and few politicians outside Ukraine believe that it will be possible to push Putin totally out of Ukraine and back to the borders of 1991.

A derailed propaganda trip to the U.S.

As an experienced entertainer, you started “building up” your plan in the summer, trumpeting that the aim was to force Russia out of Ukraine and that the plan, if implemented, would end the war in 2025. (On a personal note, Volodymyr, I must admit that my first reaction, as a pro-Ukrainian, was: “Mate if you have this brilliant plan that can end the horrific war/bring Russia to the table, what the f is are you waiting for?”)

But, you argued, “it is fair that I first present it to the US President. His support will determine the success of this plan.” Well … Your first presentation of the victory plan during your visit to the U.S. in September, couldn’t have gone worse, Volodymyr: the Americans did not love it, they did not hate it, they simply ignored it.

As usual, Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris expressed robust and continued support for Ukraine - “as long as it takes” and all that jazz - but not a word about your victory plan which you had just presented to them. And in private, officials in the Biden administration were less kind.

(Wall Street Journal, 25 September 2024)

“For months, President Volodymyr Zelensky billed the plan as a framework to defeat Russia,” a senior government official told the Wall Street Journal, "but I'm unimpressed; there's not much new there."

“The Biden administration is concerned that the Ukrainian leader’s plan for winning the war against Russia lacks a comprehensive strategy and is little more than a repackaged request for more weapons and the lifting of restrictions on long-range missiles, U.S. officials said.”

It did not help that the media focus quickly shifted to Donald Trump’s obscene and offensive attacks on Ukraine and even on you personally. (Although, in hindsight, this might have been a disguised blessing, moving to focus away from the plan’s failure to launch?). At campaign rallies, Trump turned Ukraine into an important part of his long, angry rants, again and again repeating slightly differing versions of “He (Zelensky) entered the war through a lot of bad and stupid statements, and he is no angel,” said the orange man, “and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal,” before ending with the false assertion that Ukraine is siphoning off money of the U.S. - “Every time Zelensky comes to the United States he walks away with $100 billion, I think he's the greatest salesman on Earth.”

I say “again and again’’ because Trump quickly turned ‘Ukraine’ into a political weapon against Biden/Harris, accusing them of weakness and lack of leadership: “If I had been the president, Putin would never have attacked,” Trump proclaimed, warning that Putin has no respect for Biden and Harris, who with their support and weapons for Ukraine are sleepwalking the U.S. into a nuclear confrontation with Russia. Finally, at every meeting with his followers, Trump threw in a bit of old-fashioned scaremongering: “They [Biden and Harris] are not going to be satisfied until they send American kids over to Ukraine, and that’s what they are trying to do. But American moms and dads do not want their kids to fight Ukraine and Russia, and we are not going to have our kids dying across the ocean.”

Trump’s bombastic rhetoric is the key to Trump’s policies on Ukraine and, sadly, to the hesitancy of Biden and now Harris.

His message “Ukraine is absolutely obliterated,” “Ukraine is gone… Ukraine is not Ukraine anymore,” “Millions and millions of people are dead” was played again and again. He was saying, “Folks, it’s too late to help Ukraine, so why do the Democrats insist on spending your hard-earned dollars on this?”

After those tirades, few paid much attention to the Biden/Harris administration's disregard for your victory plan. But ignore it they did.

At that point, Volodymyr, you and your team should have read the room: your main Western partners are not about to invite Ukraine into NATO. They just aren’t. And the Americans and Germans are not about to allow you to use the long-range missiles they have provided you with on Russian soil. Even though it makes perfect sense to you and me. To Biden and Scholz, avoiding escalation with Russia is more important.

(The Daily Mail, 27 September 2024)

Forcing the point hasn’t worked

At times, you, your ministers, and your advisors, Volodymyr, have had trouble not letting your understandable impatience with the West shine through.

It is already one year ago that TIME’s Moscow correspondent Simon Shuster - after having been allowed to interview both yourself and many of your government and administration - in a long and attention-grabbing piece, described your bitterness and anger with the West after your previous visit to Washington, in October 2023: “Most of all, Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies. They have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.” “Zelensky’s stubbornness,” your team told Shuster, “has hurt their team’s efforts to come up with a new strategy, a new message.”

As you put it on X: “It is difficult to repeatedly hear, 'We are working on this' while Putin continues to burn down our cities and villages. He doesn't need anyone's approval… Anyone who looks at a map clearly understands why Ukraine needs long-range capabilities. Russian logistics and military sites are safe because we cannot reach them. We know where they are located. All of this can be destroyed in months. So what is missing to end it? Strength? Decisions? Or the will?”

But, Volodymyr, the - bitter and unfair - the fact is that some of your Western partners are getting irritated by your insistence and your delivery, which can quickly hurt Ukraine. Sorry, but friends tell each other the truth. A Washington Post piece, based on off-the-record remarks from people in the Biden administration in the wake of your visit in late September, said: “Biden administration officials say that America’s considerations do not always align with Ukraine’s and that avoiding the outbreak of World War III with a nuclear-armed Russia also must be a priority.”

“Biden, for his part, has at times complained directly to Zelensky that he is not showing sufficient appreciation for the sacrifices Americans are making to support Ukraine, or the political sacrifices Biden himself is making to maintain that support, particularly when gas and food prices rose because of supply-chain issues caused by the war.”

A source in the Biden administration recently told me that “people within the administration are getting increasingly fed up with the silly public stunts of Zelensky and his team. His repeated comments that the delay in getting U.S. weapons to Ukraine has cost many lives is not a good look, not for us, of course, but he is mistaken if he thinks that it helps Ukraine over here [in Washington].” The same source also told me that there is a feeling within the Biden/Harris team that “giving in to Zelensky’s loud cries for NATO membership would kill Harris politically, that one is a dead end.”

By now, your heartfelt insistence on Ukrainian NATO membership is not making you nor Ukraine any friends. And the same goes for your (understandable) insistence on Ukraine being allowed to use the long-range missiles the West has provided Ukraine with to destroy Russian weapons on Russian soil - before they are used to kill yet more Ukrainians. In particular the Nordic and the Baltic states are very supportive on this point, but in the bigger NATO picture, they are small fish, morally correct but small fish.

(Washington Post - October 17)

And on Oct. 18, after having observed you present your victory plan for the third time in one week, the German chancellor stated, rather unequivocally, regarding NATO and long-range told journalists openly: “You know Germany’s position on the issues involved. This will not change.” “Our position is clear: We are supporting Ukraine as strongly as possible,” Scholz said. “At the same time, we are taking care that NATO does not become a party to the war so that this war doesn’t culminate in an even bigger catastrophe.”

The wrong strategy at the wrong time

Several Ukrainian commentators remarked immediately after your speech, Volodymyr, that you are now trying to “shift responsibility on(to) the allies almost entirely. Zelensky is de facto saying to NATO: the ball is now in your court. He is also saying to his home audience: look, we have a plan, we presented a plan, if this doesn’t work, it’s not on us, it’s on them.”

“Much of it was clearly geared to appeal to whoever becomes the next president of the USA,” a leading Western commentator correctly characterized the victory plan. “The plan looks like others need to do everything for us,” an opposition party MP, Oleksiy Honcharenko, wrote in a Facebook post. "Victory cannot depend only on our partners. It largely depends on us,” commented another opposition MP, Iryna Herashchenko, “[the President’s speech] only talked about the requirements for partners, and not a word about our homework, so that we meet the criteria of being a NATO country.”

I understand the temptation. With simmering criticism at home, millions have fled and have little intention of returning, problems with mobilisation and weapons supply, and the need for a breakthrough internationally, both the strategy and the timing are badly off.

(Kyiv Independent - Oct. 12, 2024)

Germany will cut its support for Ukraine in half in 2025, and this week, France predicted that it would have to lower its military aid to Ukraine by one-third, from three to two billion dollars. For comparison of engagement, France is on par with Sweden and Denmark, with about one-tenth of France's population. Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson concluded: "I don't have an appetite for further Ukraine funding, and I hope it's not necessary … if President Trump wins, I believe that he can bring that conflict to a close. I really do. I think he'll call Putin and tell him that this is enough."

(New York Times - Sept. 13, 2024)

Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, recently laid out what the Trump model looks like: "So I think it goes like this: Trump sits down, he says the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans: you, guys, need to figure out what a peaceful settlement looks like. And it will probably look like the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine. That becomes like a demilitarized zone. It's heavily fortified so that the Russians do not invade again.”

This would, in effect, mean that Russia keeps the 20% of Ukraine it currently occupies. "And Russia gets a guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine, it does not join NATO, it does not join any allied institutions," suggested the Republican vice-presidential candidate.

All of which made the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the leading tracker of the financial and military support to Ukraine, predicted that:

(Kiel Institute for the World Economy, 10 October 2024)

So - what can Ukraine do?

Well, seeing as we by now have established/cemented that you - despite all your talents in communication - cannot persuade the leading members of NATO to let you in nor allow you to use their long-range weapons inside Russia, maybe now it is time to focus on what needs to done at home, Volodymyr. And there are things to be sorted. Countless friends of Ukraine (such as this blog and, more importantly, a whole string of former U.S. generals) have again and again pointed out that you need to get your own house in order before you demand more of your allies. Two issues come to mind. And, let me tell you, as an analyst of international politics, that those issues will from now on, only pop up with increasing regularity because ‘Ukraine skeptics’ and direct opponents (internationally, but increasingly also at home) can use them politically:

The first issue is mobilization:

J.D. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” Vance pointed this out already during the debacle about the $61 billion U.S. package for Ukraine in February-April in a long piece called “The Math on Ukraine doesn’t add up,” focusing on the country’s manpower shortage. It pains me to say that Vance has been proven correct.

My co-grumper on this blog, Brian Bonner, recently analyzed the issue. “Many experts believe the manpower shortage is now as critical for Ukraine as the need for more weapons,” writes Bonner.

The Financial Times wrote last week that Ukraine “is struggling to restore its depleted ranks with motivated and well-trained soldiers.” The New York Times, citing Ukrainian soldiers who fought in the losing battle for Vulhedar, reported that “years of fighting without rotation or proper replenishment had taken its toll.”

Russia may have suffered many more killed and wounded soldiers than Ukraine so far, around 650.000 estimates say. Still, the 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers who have been killed weigh relatively heavier on Ukraine, which has a quarter or maybe a fifth of the Russian population but also a nascent democracy and strong civil society that will question the country’s military and political leadership.

Bonner cites the former CIA Director General Petraeus: “The single biggest factor I think going forward is going to be their ability to do something they’ve not done so far in this war, and that is to do very substantial conscription.”

Recently, Ukraine lowered the military draft draft age from 27 to 25. It took more than one year to get this law through. The country’s minister of defense, Rustem Umerov, admitted this week that the topic is “toxic” (his words) and that political colleagues warned him to drop the issue - “It’s better to drink the water from Chernobyl, rather than touch this topic,” he was warned. However, a minimal lowering from 27 to 25 still comes across as mind-boggling in a country that has been invaded and is fighting for its survival.

Brian Bonner puts things into perspective: “The policy still leaves Ukraine’s army with an average age of 43, much higher than other nations. Russia, to take the most relevant example, is among many countries that draft men at 18. And while there is no military draft in the U.S., American troops in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars often served in combat at the ages of 19-21.”

Add to this that more than one million Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled the country since February 2022, when Russia invaded. Stories of perfectly able men bribing their way out of military service abound and are hugely demoralizing - and damaging for Ukraine’s prospects.

It pains me to spell it out for you, Volodymyr, but you and Ukraine are asking the West for more money, more weapons, and NATO membership—and at the same time, your government is not willing to take the necessary—and possibly unpopular—steps regarding manpower.

It is only a question of time before “Ukraine skeptics” in the West use this politically. And whether we like it or not, their number is growing.

Even Radek Sikorski, Polish foreign minister and as strong a friend of Ukraine as you can possibly find, noted that “It’s a bit odd, isn’t it? I go to a barber in Warsaw, and my hair is cut by a Ukrainian barber, and I ask him, ‘what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be defending your country?’”

The second issue is corruption.

Again, Vance and Trump are doing their level worst: "We’re getting easily half a trillion dollars in the hole for the Ukraine conflict ... Why? So that one of the Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?" Vance said in an interview with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon last year. While his boss publicly shamed you, Volodymyr, for basically siphoning off money from Washington: “Every time Zelensky comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion. I think he's the greatest salesman on earth.” Trump once claimed that “Ukraine is the third most corrupt country in the world.

“Ukraine’s strategy of defeating Russia by joining the West’s political community and security institutions has been undermined by its continued struggles with corruption, a problem that is still far beyond Western standards. The issue extends to the center of the Ukrainian state”, wrote Foreign Policy recently, “top judges, politicians, and officials have faced corruption charges, and the Ministry of Defense has been at the heart of many corruption scandals, such as procuring overpriced eggs and winter jackets, buying 100,000 mortar shells that were never delivered, or accepting bribes from men who wanted to escape conscription. Transparency International ranked Ukraine at 104 out of 180 countries in the corruption index for 2023, far worse than members of the European Union whom Ukraine wishes to join as an equal.”

Parts of the enormous Ukrainian state apparatus have undoubtedly made progress in fighting corruption during the decade since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. But the problem is still humongous, so all-encompassing that doctors regularly ask wounded soldiers for bribes to get treated or to be classified as “badly enough injured” to get their soldier pension and access to free treatment.

(The Kennan Institute, July 31, 2024)

In a recent analysis for the Kennan Institute, Ukrainian researchers described the situation: “With the support of Western partners, Ukraine has been working to overcome the issue. Independent anti-corruption organizations, courts, and public associations,  have been created to rein in corruption schemes.”

“Anti-corruption legislation is gradually growing teeth, but corruption persists and dominates other problems Ukrainians face.” The researchers refer to a series of opinion polls showing that no less than 88% of Ukrainians see “corruption to be a significant problem”; that more Ukrainians (51%) see corruption as the biggest threat to the country compared to Russia’s military aggression (46%); 70% believe that the government is profiteering from the war and increasingly sinking into corruption, “a striking uptick from a year ago, when only 43 percent of respondents shared this opinion. Ukrainians are increasingly associating corruption in government with the military, which has more opportunities to engage in corrupt schemes, such as arms trade or evasion of mobilization.”

And it is worrying, to say the very least - both for the Ukrainian reality and the political optics - that the corruption stories out of Ukraine, not least in connection with the war, procurement and drafting of soldiers, now are coming in a steady flow, practically every day: a couple of days ago, Ukraine’s minister of defense Rustem Umerov admitted that Ukraine’s Western partners are unhappy with the situation, and recently he fired three of his deputy ministers and started a radical restructuring of Ukraine’s procurement system after several scandals. In Umerov’s first four months in charge, an audit uncovered corruption in military procurement for no less than $262 million. That’s a lot of bullets and tanks.

Oh, and a point three, Volodymyr; it is maybe a small point, and I feel bad about mentioning it because your self-restraint in the face of 2.5 years of Western hesitance has been admirable, impressive - but slightly unhinged outbursts (later hastily walked back) like the one this past week that Ukraine will develop its own nuclear weapons if you are not receiving NATO membership and adequate Western support … let’s say, such outbursts are not helpful. Really not helpful.

(Kyiv Independent, 17 October)

Regarding your ‘Victory Plan’, Volodymyr, instead of flogging a dead horse, sorry, I suggest putting on another play, another script - with a focus on the doable. Politics is the art of the possible:

I would focus on developing the Western interest in your third, fourth, and fifth points because those points could directly benefit your Western allies and Ukraine. The most obvious and efficient would be to instantly develop the option of inviting former NATO soldiers and, not least, officers to join the Ukrainian army (a change in the law only two weeks ago finally opened up for foreigners being able to take up a position as officers). This could also be an efficient bridge for a deeper implementation of the long string of individual security agreements you have agreed with Western countries over the past year. And, yes, your point five about Ukraine after the war being able to relieve U.S. soldiers stationed in Europe is potentially great, speaking directly to whoever will be the next U.S. president.

Finally, Volodymyr, you know better than anyone that timing is king. Ukrainian membership of NATO will come, obviously, because Ukraine is a European country.