While it still awaits a fuller assessment, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s so-called “victory plan,” as he presented it in a speech to the Verkhovna Rada appears to be delusional at best and insane at worst. “Ukraine’s Victory Plan is a plan to strengthen our country, to strengthen our positions, so that we are strong enough to end the war, so that Ukraine has all the muscles,” Zelenskyy said, ignoring the reality that Russian forces are advancing on all fronts, and otherwise advancing on the battlefield. “This Plan can be implemented. It depends on our partners. I emphasize: on partners. It certainly does not depend on Russia.”
The plan has five parts: “The first point is an invitation to NATO. Right now,” Zelenskyy said. “We understand that NATO membership is a matter for the future, not the present. But Putin must see that his geopolitical calculations are failing. The Russian people must feel this—that their “tsar” has lost geopolitically to the world.”
The second part is the buildup of the Ukrainian military “so that Russians feel what war is, and despite Russian propaganda begin to turn their hatred against the Kremlin,” he said.
The third point is deterrence. “The Russian leadership acts aggressively only when it is convinced that it will not receive an adequate destructive response,” Zelenskyy claimed. “When Russia knows that the response will come, and understands what kind of response it will be, they choose negotiations and stable coexistence even with strategic adversaries. And we know these examples.”
