The Ukrainian president formally presented his plan calling for ramped-up Western military firepower and economic aid and at least a promise of NATO membership to help accelerate the war’s end. The country’s supporters should heed his calls for fortifying Ukraine’s defenses.
With the Russian-Ukrainian war approaching its third anniversary, many Ukrainians and their supporters are feeling dejected because there is no end in sight. More than 300,000 Ukrainians have been killed or wounded (according to U.S. intelligence estimates) and Ukraine is facing painful electricity blackouts during the winter. Far more Russian troops have been killed or wounded—more than 600,000—yet Russian forces keep attacking. They are slowly making gains, at great cost, in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian morale is starting to sag and support for Ukraine in the West could start to decline as well, especially if former President Donald Trump wins the White House again in November.
In this challenging political environment, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week unveiled a “Plan for Victory” that, he claimed, could result in the end of the war as soon as next year. The plan consists of five points and three classified annexes that have been made available to governments that are supporting Ukraine.
How realistic is this plan? Does it offer a road map toward ending the war? Or is it primarily a messaging exercise designed to maintain support for Ukraine’s war effort at home and abroad?
Path to a settlement
To state the bottom line up front: The plan would offer Ukraine a route toward a potentially secure settlement with Russia, particularly if it were willing to forego the immediate return of its occupied territory, reparations from Russia, justice for Russian war criminals, and other ambitious goals outlined in the ten-point “peace plan” Zelenskyy released in 2023. Unfortunately, the chances of the “victory plan” being implemented, which depends on a considerable increase in Western support for Ukraine, are slim. Maintaining even the current level of aid will be challenging. Ukraine could be forced to pursue other measures to guarantee its future security, including, as Zelenskyy mentioned last week, the possibility of Kyiv seeking to acquire its own nuclear arsenal.
The preamble of the peace plan acknowledges that “victory is not easily achieved” but argues that it’s possible to implement the plan because “it depends on our partners. It does not depend on Russia.” Russian President Vladimir Putin undoubtedly believes he can still accomplish his objectives (which include annexing at least four provinces of Ukraine and reducing the rump state to a Russian satrapy) because he calculates that Western support for Ukraine will inevitably wane. Zelenskyy argues that the only way “to force Russia” to make peace is for Russia to “lose the war.” He argues that his victory plan will achieve this objective.
The NATO question
The first and most controversial plank of the Victory Plan is the plea for Ukraine to be granted North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership. This is unlikely to happen while Ukraine is still fighting Russia because it would draw NATO into a conflict with a nuclear-armed state. While many NATO members, particularly in Eastern Europe, have signaled strong support for Ukraine’s membership, the two most important members—the United States and Germany—have been unwilling to do so because they view it as too provocative.
“We understand that NATO membership is for the future,” Zelenskyy acknowledges, “not the present.” He argues that, even if NATO membership is promised down the road, it would be “a demonstration of resolve.”
Zelenskyy is right that admitting Ukraine to NATO would signal resolve, but the opposite is also true: That NATO is issuing no such invitation signals the West’s lack of resolve and encourages Putin to keep fighting. It is possible that NATO could be more willing to admit Ukraine after a cease-fire, but NATO accession likely will be a consequence, rather than a cause, of a peace settlement. There is no mention in the victory plan of bilateral security guarantees, but seeking such guarantees is likely to be a more fruitful exercise for Ukraine in the short term rather than insisting on NATO membership.
Arming Ukraine
The second plank of the peace plan, an “irreversible strengthening of Ukraine’s defense against the aggressor,” is, in theory, more immediately achievable. But it, too, is unlikely to be fully implemented anytime soon.
Zelenskyy asks specifically for:
“help in equipping reserve brigades”;
“elevating Ukraine’s air defense to protect cities from Russian missiles and drones”;
“joint operations with European neighbors to down Russian missiles and drones”;
“expanding operations using our Ukrainian missiles and drones”;
“lifting partner-imposed restrictions on the use of long-range weapons across all Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine and in Russia”;
and “providing Ukraine with real-time satellite data and intelligence gathered by other means.” Western allies are already equipping Ukrainian army brigades, providing air defenses, and giving satellite data and other intelligence. Zelenskyy seems to be asking for more of what is already on offer, and that should be the most achievable aspect of his plan—subject to capacity constraints in the West. The Joe Biden administration and its allies orchestrated a campaign last summer to send more air defenses to Ukraine, but it’s not enough. The administration recently dispatched to Israel a THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) battery designed to intercept ballistic missiles, along with U.S. soldiers to operate it. Ukrainians are left wondering why Israel is getting the battery and not their country.
One interim measure that could bolster Ukrainian air defenses would be for neighboring states such as Poland to extend their air defenses to cover adjacent Ukrainian territory (such as the city of Lviv), thereby allowing Kyiv to move air defenses from western Ukraine closer to the front lines. This would risk making NATO states a party to the conflict, but in a purely defensive capacity, it would be unlikely to escalate the conflict. This would seem to be a risk worth running.
So, too, it would make sense for Washington to loosen restrictions on U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles (with a range of 190 miles), allowing longer-range strikes into Russian territory. If the United States were to act on this, Britain would loosen restrictions on its Storm Shadow cruise missiles, and Germany could even be induced to send its Taurus cruise missiles. The Biden administration has refused to budge on this issue, however. It argues that softening its restrictions would cross a Russian red line and would not alter the course of the conflict, because there are too few ATACMS to make a monumental change. Targeting Russian airbases near the Ukrainian border, U.S. officials argue, will simply lead the Russians to redeploy their aircraft to bases further away.
No one imagines that long-range missile strikes alone would win the war, but they could be an important part of Ukrainian campaign plans by degrading Russian manpower and equipment before it arrives in Ukraine. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, writes that “hundreds of known Russian military and paramilitary objects in Russia are in range of Ukrainian ATACMS.” It is high time for the United States to grant Ukraine the permission it seeks without being paralyzed by fear of Russian retaliation. After all, Ukraine is already striking deep inside Russia with its drones.
The third point of the Ukrainian peace plan appears to be related to these long-range strikes: “Ukraine proposes deploying on its territory a comprehensive non-nuclear strategic deterrence package that will be sufficient to protect Ukraine from any military threat from Russia.” Zelenskyy envisions this “deterrence package” imposing a choice on the Kremlin: “Russia either chooses diplomacy or faces the collapse of its war machine.” This does not seem to be a realistic scenario, however, given the limitations not only in the West’s willingness but also in its manufacturing capacity and weapons stocks. Quite simply, it is extremely unlikely that Western allies will provide Ukraine with enough long-range missiles to bring Russia to its knees. Maybe it should, but it won’t. Even ATACMS strikes on Russia will, at best, degrade rather than defeat the Russian war machine.
Economic investment
The fourth point of the peace plan is economic: Zelenskyy calls on allied countries to implement “joint investment” plans to exploit Ukraine’s natural resources: “Ukraine has natural resources and critical metals worth trillions of dollars,” he notes. “These include uranium, titanium, lithium, graphite, and other strategic resources, which will either strengthen Russia or Ukraine and the democratic world.”
It’s true that Ukraine is a potentially wealthy country and that both Ukraine and its allies have a stake in taking advantage of its resources to make the country self-sustaining in the future, freeing it of dependence on Western financial aid. But this prospect is still far away. Ukraine has lost so much electrical infrastructure from Russian air strikes that it will face lengthy blackouts heading into winter that will preclude an expansion of industrial or mining production. Exploiting Ukraine’s natural resources will require either the end of the war or the acquisition of much better air defenses—and neither option is likely anytime soon. In the meantime, Western aid needs to focus on simply getting Ukraine through the winter, rather than launching costly new economic initiatives.
The fifth point of the peace plan is the most puzzling: “We foresee, with the agreement of our partners, the replacement of certain U.S. military contingents stationed in Europe with Ukrainian units after the war.” Zelenskyy is right that, once the war with Russia ends, Ukraine will have a massive, battle-hardened army that could be a considerable asset to NATO. But it would not make sense to replace U.S. units with Ukrainian units in countries such as Poland or the Baltic states, because deployments of U.S. troops extend the U.S. nuclear (and air power) umbrella to Europe, which is essential to deterring Russian aggression.
Exploring the nuclear option
This last point draws attention to a potential additional, unwritten point of the peace plan that Zelenskyy hinted at during his visit to Brussels last week. “Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and that will be our protection or we should have some sort of alliance,” he said. “Apart from NATO, today we do not know any effective alliances.” Zelenskyy likely means this as a veiled threat: Either grant Ukraine NATO membership or it will build its own nuclear deterrent. Given that NATO membership does not appear to be on offer, it would be perfectly understandable for Ukraine to explore its nuclear options for the long term.
Such a move carries all kinds of risks—including the potential of a preemptive Russian nuclear strike and the potential cutoff of U.S. aid if Ukraine violates its non-proliferation commitments. It is also unlikely to be practical anytime soon; although Ukraine has considerable experience operating nuclear power plants, it does not currently have the technological capacity to build nuclear weapons. Yet nuclear weapons are the one military capacity that Ukraine could conceivably acquire that would deter future Russian aggression after the conclusion of some kind of peace treaty.
Ukraine could certainly be within its rights to rebuild the nuclear arsenal it gave up under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum given that Russia—one of the signatories to this treaty—has reneged on its pledge to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. However, the nuclear option is not a quick solution to Ukraine’s pressing security woes. For the near future, given that NATO membership is not on the table, Ukraine would be well advised to focus on bilateral security guarantees from individual NATO members.
In sum, the Ukrainian Victory Plan contains many valuable suggestions for strengthening Ukrainian defense capacity. If it were implemented, it would be likely to shorten the war and conceivably could lead Russia to negotiate far more seriously than it has done to date. But even this plan is unlikely to exert enough pressure on Russia to make it disgorge the Ukrainian territory it now occupies, which amounts to about 20 percent of the country. The bigger issue, of course, is that the victory plan is unlikely to be implemented, as Ukraine’s Western allies are unlikely to make the increased aid commitments that Zelenskyy asks for. The likely result will be a war that will continue to grind on into its fourth year and beyond.