While Ukraine President Zelensky is in the United States, brazenly campaigning for Harris-Walz, he will meet with Joe Biden to discuss his “Victory Plan.”
The Plan includes launching Western long-range missiles deep into Russia. Russian President Putin has already warned that he will regard that as a direct declaration of war with Russia. He has also warned it will be fought on US soil, not only on Europe’s.
According to the New Yorker interview, the plan also includes accelerating Ukraine’s membership in NATO and the EU.
Zelensky is saving the details for his meeting with Biden, but he has said that the plan contains a number of elements related to Ukraine’s long-term security and geopolitical position, which presumably includes joining NATO on an accelerated schedule, and the provision of Western military aid with fewer restrictions. (In the run-up to the trip, Zelensky has been lobbying his allies in the West to allow Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia with long-range missiles supplied by the U.S. and other Western countries.) Ukraine’s incursion last month into Kursk, a border region in western Russia—where Ukrainian forces currently occupy around four hundred square miles of Russian territory—is also part of this plan, according to Zelensky, in that it provides Kyiv with leverage against the Kremlin, while also demonstrating that its military is capable of going on the offensive.
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Here’s another crucial element: this is a war of postponement for the United States. It’s a way to buy time. As far as Russia is concerned, Ukraine does not even need to lose outright for Russia to win. Russia understands that Ukraine is struggling as it is; it already stands excluded from the European Union and NATO, with nearly a third of its territory occupied. Russia might decide that’s enough, so it might strike Poland just the same—in response to some provocation from Belarus, for example. And so, after two and a half years of your support and investment—for which we are very grateful—you can multiply them all by zero. America would have to start investing from scratch, and in a war of a totally different calibre. American soldiers would fight in it. Which would all benefit Russia tremendously, I should add.
Membership in NATO means direct war with Russia, and they promise to go nuclear if they must. They say it would mean an existential threat.
Zelensky also wants a constant stream of more advanced weaponry. He reaffirmed his commitment to a peace summit, which Russia rejected.
He will demand that Ukraine return to its 1991 borders, affirm its sovereignty in Crimea, and retake all of its territory from Russia.
the US pays for everything in Ukraine: weapons, salaries, pensions, everything.
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