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Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the United States in an effort to reinvigorate American support for his country's defense against the Russian invasion, now in its third year.
During his trip, in what appears to be the last push before the November presidential election, the Ukrainian leader presented to the Biden administration his so-called “Victory Plan” aimed at forcing Russia to end the war. Unfortunately for the Ukrainian people, Zelenskyy's plan is highly unlikely to restore peace to Ukraine. Here's why:
First. The plan lacks a realistic definition of victory and a viable strategy to achieve it. President Reagan described his vision of winning the Cold War with the Soviet Union to his confidant and advisor Richard Allen in 1977: “We win, they lose.” It sounds simple.
But behind this approach was a carefully thought-out containment strategy, developed and executed by Reagan and his team over many years. This strategy comprised a series of very specific measures that focused on boosting the military power and defense economy of the United States while weakening that of the Soviet Union.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Biden walk to the Oval Office of the White House, September 21, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Unlike Reagan's plan, Zelenskyy's plan is little more than the same old plea he has been employing for more than two years: more American and European weapons and permission to launch missile strikes deep into Russian territory. This reworded request that lacked a comprehensive strategy for winning left senior American and European officials “unimpressed,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
What is presented as a new “concrete” plan does not contain a clear path to winning the war. Furthermore, Zelenskyy's definition of victory over Russia remains an illusion. In an interview Zelenskyy gave to the New Yorker during his visit, he admitted that “there hasn't been any change in my thinking” regarding Ukraine's complete victory.
He seeks a “justice” victory, which he defines as regaining all of Ukraine's territory from Russia, including Crimea, and a path to kyiv's membership in NATO. Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine and has occupied Crimea for a decade.
Ukraine's membership in NATO, which Russia considers part of its strategic security perimeter, has been a long-standing red line for Moscow. It is Putin's version of the Monroe Doctrine. To impose it, Putin started this war. Therefore, while one can sympathize with Zelenskyy's aspirations, they are currently unattainable.
Second. Zelenskyy's plan ignores the reality on the ground. Russia has been making gradual but steady gains on the battlefield. Having claimed control of the eastern coal mining town of Ugledar (“coal gift”) on Wednesday, Russian forces are advancing toward Pokrovsk. Taking Pokrovsk would give Russian forces a strategic advantage in capturing the rest of Donbas. Pokrovsk, a central city connecting seven different roads and railways, is used by Ukraine to resupply its troops.
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Russia fired 1,300 Iranian Shahed drones into Ukraine, a record number. Not a single day passed in September without a drone attack. (East2West)
Meanwhile, kyiv has been under intense bombardment throughout September from Russian missiles and drones. Russia fired 1,300 Iranian Shahed drones into Ukraine, a record number. Not a single day passed in September without a drone attack. Russia has destroyed 50% of Ukraine's energy infrastructure, according to the United Nations. Many areas of the country are becoming uninhabitable, lacking water, heat and electricity, as winter approaches.
Reversing the current situation is a monumental task that Ukraine is not in a position to undertake. Even US intelligence admitted in a recent report leaked to the New York Times, probably intentionally, that even if President Biden allowed Ukraine to use long-range US missiles to attack military targets inside Russia, that would not change the trajectory of the war in a fundamental way. The number of long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) supplied to Ukraine is insufficient to get the job done. Neither the United States nor Europe have any spare reserves or production capacity to quickly bolster their increasingly depleted arsenals.
The key factor that Zelenskyy and the Biden-Harris administration have ignored is the disparity in combat potential between Russia and Ukraine. It is a combination of the number of weapons, the number of troops, the defense economy and the production capacity of the military industrial complex. Here are the facts.
A Ukrainian service member rides in a tank near the front-line town of Vuhledar, Feb. 22, 2023. (Reuters/Alex Babenko)
Third. Ukraine is dramatically outgunned and outmanned by Russia. There's a reason the Pentagon considers Russia a “near-peer competitor” against which even the U.S. military would have a hard time prevailing, because Russia, if the U.S. were to deploy forces in the theater, would most likely join forces with China, Iran and North Korea. Korea. Each of these three countries supports Russia's war effort.
The United States is simply not prepared for such a multi-theater war, according to the recently released report by the National Defense Strategy Commission (NDS). The commission concluded that “the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and capabilities necessary to be confident that it can deter and prevail in combat.”
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This is exactly why Biden would not allow Zelenskyy to use long-range American weapons to deeply attack Russia. Biden knows very well that the risk of Putin using nuclear weapons and the risk of the United States being drawn into a direct war with Russia is real, as revealed by a large array of intelligence services and confirmed by extensive war games that we carry out in the intelligence community.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting on the situation in the Kursk region, at his residence on the outskirts of Moscow, August 12, 2024. (Gavriil Grigorov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Four. Labor also overwhelmingly favors Russia. Of approximately one million killed or wounded in this war, the Ukrainians have lost approximately 480,000 and the Russians have lost 600,000. But Russia's population is three times that of Ukraine, allowing Putin to wage a war of attrition down to the last Ukrainian.
As Ukraine bleeds, with the average age of a Ukrainian soldier fighting Russia reaching 43-45 years, Russia has already deployed a force 15% larger than it had at the start of the war, according to the same report from the NDS Commission. In September, Putin ordered, by decree, another (a third, since the beginning of the war) increase in the Russian armed forces, adding 180,000 troops.
The Russian army currently has 2.38 million people, of which 1.5 million are active military personnel. (For comparison, the US military has approximately 1.3 million active duty members and 738,000 reserve and National Guard members as of June 30, 2024.) And just last week Putin passed a law granting immunity to convicts who join the military and are deployed to fight in Ukraine.
Ukrainian servicemen from the 1st Independent Tank Brigade ride a BREM-1 evacuation tank near Vuhledar, Donetsk region, Ukraine, March 6, 2023. (Reuters/Lisi Niesner)
Fifth. Russia also surpasses Ukraine when it comes to defense economics. Ukraine's GDP fell by almost 30% in 2022, as a result of the Russian invasion, according to the European Parliament. While its tax revenues fell, its total expenses grew by 270% between 2021 and 2023, and defense and security spending increased dramatically. In August, Ukraine narrowly avoided a default on its debts, when S&P Global downgraded Ukraine's credit rating to “selective” default, pending the restructuring of foreign currency commercial debt to take effect.
The IMF estimates that if Ukraine fights an intense war for a year longer than the end of 2024, its public debt level, currently close to 100%, would reach almost 140% of GDP. In the coming years, Ukraine will continue to rely on external financial support, and most of the financing will have to come from official creditors such as the EU and the US.
Meanwhile, Russia has greatly expanded its defense spending, which has risen to 7.5% of GDP. Putin transitioned Russia's military and economy to a wartime situation seven years before the invasion, invoking a legal regime called the “special period.” As a result, manufacturing plans that produced civilian goods were retooled to make munitions and military equipment; factories now run 24/7 in three mandatory shifts; and supply chains have been redesigned to avoid Western sanctions. With the military-industrial complex driving the economy, 29% of Russia's federal budget will be spent on national defense in 2024.
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Former President Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Trump Tower on September 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Former President Trump was criticized for refusing to say during his debate with Kamala Harris whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war with Russia. But Trump is not afraid of being called a “Putin apologist” by the deluded. Unlike the Biden-Harris team and many bureaucrats serving in the US government, Trump is a successful businessman who lives in the real world, not the imagined one. He understands “The art of the possible”: what we can achieve (possible) with the available resources, and not what we want (sometimes impossible).
As a strategic thinker who adheres to the realpolitik school of thought, Trump fully understands the complex world of geopolitics. Their actions, therefore, are based on rational calculations, not emotions.
That's why Trump's response to the debate moderators was “I want the war to end.” Volodymyr Zelenskyy and anyone interested in saving Ukraine from total destruction would do well to heed Trump's wisdom.
However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at a UN Security Council meeting last month, said he has no doubt Ukraine can win the war.
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