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06-10-2024
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will present Kyiv’s “victory plan” during an upcoming meeting of Western allies in Germany.
“We will present the victory plan, clear, specific steps for a just end to the war,” Zelenskiy wrote on October 5, referring to the all-out war with Russia that began when Ukraine was invaded in February 2022.
The 25th meeting of more than 50 allies and partners, collectively known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, will take place at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany on October 12.
Referring to the strategy as “peace through strength,” Zelenskiy said that the “victory plan provides for the necessary strengthening of Ukraine.”
Zelenskiy added that Kyiv had already begun discussions with the United States, Ukraine’s leading supporter during the war with Russia, and that “we are involving all partners.”
Zelenskiy began teasing Ukraine’s “victory plan” in August, and later announced that it was nearly complete and consists of “four main points and one that must be implemented after the war.”
During his visit to Washington last month, he presented the plan to US President Joe Biden as well as to both candidates in the November 5 presidential election current Vice President Kamala Harris (Democrat) and former President Donald Trump (Republican).
A spokesman for the US State Department said at the time that the plan contained “a number of productive steps.”
Little else is known about the plan, although The Wall Street Journal has cited anonymous US officials as saying it was essentially a renewed request for more weapons and for countries that donate long-range missiles to lift restrictions on using them to strike deeper into Russian territory.
In late September, Zelenskiy said that Ukraine and its partners should “determine joint steps and a common vision of how to increase pressure on Russia” during the Ramstein meeting.
Zelenskiy also said that Ukraine’s military faced a “very, very difficult” situation as it continues to fend off invading Russian forces that have made significant gains in Ukraine’s east in recent weeks.
However, Zelenskiy stressed the importance of Ukraine’s military making gains itself ahead of the Ramstein meeting to assure allies of its capabilities.
Zelenskiy is scheduled to meet again with US President Biden during the gathering.
Skepticism prevailed in the Ukrainian border city of Sumy when locals were asked about government plans to accept refugees from Russia’s Kursk region. Officials have said that civilians displaced by Ukraine’s ongoing military incursion in Russia could be relocated and offered humanitarian aid but one man speaking to media on August 16 said; “let their country protect them. We’ve got enough of our own suffering.”
It’s the dog days of a brutal summer on Ukraine’s battlefields, where Russian advances have been slow but relentless and Ukrainian forces are stretched thin by a lack of soldiers, strained by the exhausted frontline units unable to rotate out for rest.
After several months of uncertainty when Western weapons supplies slowed to a trickle and Ukraine struggled to replenish its troop numbers, the situation has more or less stabilized for Kyiv.
“Things are better (than in the spring), despite the huge number of clashes,” said Serhiy Hrabskiy, a retired Ukrainian Army colonel. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
