KYIV — Ukraine will present its “victory plan” to its allies in Germany next weekend, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday, setting up a test of support for Kyiv’s vision on ending the war with Russia.
“We will present the victory plan, clear, specific steps for a just end to the war,” Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Zelenskiy will meet U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders at a regular meeting of Kyiv’s key NATO and other allies at the U.S. Ramstein Air Base on Oct. 12.
Ukraine, fending off an invasion from much larger neighbor for nearly 1,000 days, suffered a major setback on the battlefield on Wednesday, when Russian forces took the eastern town of Vuhledar after two years of resistance.
Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address that his government, military and diplomatic officials will do “everything” they can in coming days to ensure that the Ramstein meeting can become “positive for our defense, for our vision of how the war should end”.
He presented the plan to Biden and both the candidates running to succeed him, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, last week after months of Kyiv’s teasing ideas on how to end the war.
The White House said Zelenskiy’s plan contained “a number of productive steps”.
But a U.S. official described it a repackaged request for more weapons and a lifting of restrictions on the use of long-range missiles. The plan presupposes the ultimate defeat of Russia in the war, the official said. Some officials see that aim as unrealistic.
The Financial Times, citing unnamed diplomats, reported on Saturday that Ukraine ceding land to Russia to gain NATO membership may be the “only game in town”. But Ukrainian media cited a source in Zelenskiy’s office as saying Kyiv does not “trade sovereignty and territories” and calling the report “simply chatter”.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said in June that Moscow would end the war he launched in February 2022 only if Kyiv agreed to hand over all of four regions claimed by Moscow and to drop its ambitions to join NATO. Kyiv rejected those demands as tantamount to surrender.
