The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky begins this Tuesday an official visit to the United States in which he will attend the meeting of the UN General Assembly and will talk with the president Joe BidenThe trip comes at a key moment in the context of the war between Ukraine and Russia, with several aspects on the table that both leaders will have to deal with: first, the refusal of the United States (endorsed this Monday by the United Kingdom) to allow its weapons to be used on Russian soil, understanding that this It would be taken from Moscow as a declaration of war.
Separately, Zelensky arrives with what he calls a “Victory Plan” to distinguish it from the “peace plans” that several countries have recently presented, highlighting the one endorsed by China and Brazilwhich basically reproduce the Kremlin’s thesis: any ceasefire agreement must respond to the current situation on the front. What does this mean? That Ukraine must accept Russian sovereignty over the territories occupied since 2014, including Crimea, practically all of Lugansk, a large part of Donetsk and the south of Kherson and Zaporizhia.
Of course, Ukraine flatly refuses to such an agreement, which looks more like a surrender than anything else. The outgoing NATO Secretary General himself, Jens Stoltenberg, declared last week that the best way to end a war is to lose it and that A Russian victory would pose a serious risk to the Alliance.Zelensky’s goal is Biden understands that riskvalue it and prioritize it over the advice of Jake Sullivan, the Secretary of National Defense, who always seeks to avoid any provocation against Russia for fear of a nuclear war.
Like NATO, but not in NATO
Zelensky also knows that, in addition to Putin and Sullivan, he has another rival: time. There is just over a month left until the elections in the United States and the vice president Kamala Harris fails to distance itself from Donald Trump. Right now, the situation is a total tie in the seven key states that will decide the next president. Considering that Trump has already shown several times his admiration for Vladimir Putin -in the debate with Harris he did not want to comment on a possible Ukrainian victory in the war- and that his vice president Vance is even more radical in his pro-Russian positions, kyiv needs a commitment from Biden as soon as possible.
Zelensky shakes hands with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro during his visit to the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant.
Reuters
This is precisely what the four main points of Zelensky’s Victory Plan are about, which the Ukrainian president himself mentioned very vaguely last weekend in a television interview. In fact, the essence of the plan can be summed up in the first of these points: The West’s security guarantee for Ukraine. A guarantee that would involve reaching a mutual defense agreement similar to that between NATO members… but without nominally requiring entry into the Alliance, something that Moscow has already said it would never accept.
This guarantee, which Zelensky intends to make concrete as soon as possible so that Trump can not keep its promise of “end the war in two days“The other three points of the plan are: support for the operation in Kursk to force Russia to divide its troops into two different fronts, delivery of a series of advanced weapons that Zelensky did not want to specify and an economic agreement with the Western community to scare away the ghost of post-war poverty and the possibility of a new Russian intervention.
The meeting with Trump and the new peace conference
Zelensky, who will meet with Trump during his trip, and who has always been careful not to speak badly of the former president – although let us not forget that the first attempt at impeachment that the Republican suffered had Zelensky himself as its protagonistwhen Trump tried to pressure him to air possible dirty laundry about Hunter Biden, Joe’s son – he wants nothing to do with a reissue of the Minsk Agreements of 2014 and 2015 that led to the loss of Crimea, the prolongation of the war in Donbas and the systematic failure to comply with all guarantees, culminating in the attempted invasion in February 2022.
In exchange, he proposes a multilateral conference in November, to continue the work done in June in the Swiss town of Bürgenstock, and to which Russia would be invited. The Kremlin had already made it known at the time that it had no interest in attending such a conference. Although the messages are always mixed, this is not observed in Russia. no clear desire for negotiationrather to put on the table the “reality of the territory”, which is why the last two months have seen more Russian advances than in any of the previous twelve months.
Zelensky during a visit to a factory in the state of Pennsylvania.
Efe
In fact, this Monday it was confirmed The fall of the city of Ukrainsk and the penetration of about two kilometers south of Selidove, a town south of Pokrovsk that is key to an eventual attack on Ukraine’s second largest communications hub in Donetsk after the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk conglomerate. If this penetration is due to a massive withdrawal of Ukrainian troops, it could become really problematic. If it is simply the result of several days of fighting, things would be different, but Oleksandr Syrskyi’s army is finding it increasingly difficult to defend both the Selidove-Pokrovsk axis and the Vuhledar-Velyka Novosilka line.
When talking about goals, it is difficult to put them in terms of days, months or years, but it seems clear that Russia also wants to get to the opening of the New US President with the most pieces on the boardWhether or not he succeeds will depend on the success of the Kursk counteroffensive (of which there has been no further news) and the firmness of the Ukrainian allies. Firmness that will be put into play in the coming days.
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