What to Make of Zelensky’s ‘Plan for Victory’

On Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made an unannounced visit to Kyiv to discuss Volodymyr Zelensky’s so-called Plan for Victory.

It may have been little noticed in the U.S. in the heat of our presidential election’s final weeks, but the Ukrainian president spent early October meeting with various Western leaders to discuss his proposal before he outlined the five-point plan in a speech to the Ukrainian parliament on October 16. Over the last few weeks, Zelensky has met with British prime minister Keir Starmer and NATO secretary general Mark Rutte at Downing Street as well as French president Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni in Rome, and German chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin. (Zelensky had planned to brief Joe Biden in person, but Biden’s early-October trip to Europe was canceled as Hurricane Milton closed in on Florida.)

So what’s in the plan? Not every detail has been made public of course. But a general outline can be gleaned from the various public statements and press reports.

First, Zelensky is asking for an explicit and formal path to Ukrainian membership in NATO. “We understand that NATO membership is a matter for the future, not the present,” Zelensky emphasized in his speech last week to the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, but the Ukrainian government still views a formal path to NATO membership as a crucial component of its national grand strategy.

Second, Zelensky asks for additional Western military aid and assistance, especially for “equipping reserve brigades,” “elevating Ukraine’s air defenses,” and greater intelligence sharing, along with a specific request to lift “partner-imposed restrictions on the use of long-range weapons across all Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine and in Russia.”

Third, Zelensky 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.”

Fourth, Zelensky requests a “joint investment” in Ukraine’s economy and Western assistance in the development and exploitation of the huge reserves of natural resources in his country.

Fifth, Zelensky foresees a post-war Ukrainian army paying back Western financial assistance by stationing elements of the battle-hardened Ukrainian army in Europe, allowing the “withdrawal of certain U.S. military contingents,” which could, in theory, lighten the load on the U.S. treasury down the line.

That’s the plan, as far as it can be assessed. What’s not on the table? “Trading Ukraine’s territory or sovereignty” for peace with Russia. Indeed, Zelensky received a standing ovation from the Ukrainian parliament when he emphasized this point in his recent speech, according to the New York Times.

Of course, after their discussions, Western leaders have been polite but pointedly noncommittal.

NATO’s Rutte said the Victory Plan was a “strong signal” but that affirmative support for it would be “a bit difficult because there are many issues that we have to understand better.” Britain’s Starmer described his meeting with Zelensky as an opportunity to “go through the plan, to talk in more detail.”

Unfortunately, the truth is that the publicly released bullet points of Zelensky’s Victory Plan do not include a substantially new strategy from those previously put forth piecemeal by the Zelensky government.

The Ukrainians have been asking for a formal NATO admission process for years — despite the fact that the alliance has so far prudently declined to extend NATO membership to a country that is currently fighting a shooting war with Russia.

And the Ukrainians have been asking for advanced weapons systems and for the lifting of limitations on deep strikes into Russia territory using Western munitions for many months — requests that have, in my view, much to commend themselves from an operational standpoint and are reasonable steps we could make that would impose costs on the Kremlin without obviously and irrevocably causing the Russians to escalate further. In and of itself, however, the question of additional equipment and munitions and their employment are merely those of the tactical and operational levels.

If victory is the goal, the real question for Ukraine, its political leadership, and its allies in the West is one of strategy.

The question must be asked: Would a rebuilt and re-equipped Ukrainian army’s aim be to stem the Russian tide — which has been advancing incrementally in the Donbas for most of this year — at more or less the current positions and bleed the Russians until they choose to withdraw or negotiate on terms favorable to the Ukrainians? Or does Zelensky hope to drive the Russian army out of the illegally annexed Ukrainian provinces, including Crimea, in a grand counteroffensive next year akin to what was attempted in 2023?

It’s an important question because the military needs of the latter offensive strategy are of necessity much more complex, costly, and intensive than the needs of the former operationally defensive strategy.

At least in my view, it’s beginning to become clear that the war in Ukraine has shown that the advantage in modern mechanized war has swung heavily (though perhaps temporarily) toward the army that is on the defensive. According to traditional military doctrine, the attacker should have at least a local numerical superiority over the defender if he wants to set himself up for success. But over the course of this war, neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians have proven themselves to be able to consistently mass the personnel and fires necessary for sustained — and successful — offensive operations against well-prepared defenders supported by drones and loitering munitions. There should be no expectation, even with an infusion of Western military aid, that this will change in the short term.

It is of course understandable that Zelensky and his government do not want to discuss all this in public, though it’s very likely that it was these very questions that were debated behind closed doors among friends and allies this month. And it may well be these very concerns that are causing the polite skepticism on the part of Western leaders.

Indeed, the Ukrainians find themselves in a similar situation to that of the French and British allies in the First World War in 1917 through early 1918. By the time the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, the British and French had learned, much to their sorrow, that offensive operations against the entrenched Imperial German Army on the Western Front could only come at a great cost — and for relatively little gain. But instead of waiting for the 2 million Americans who were to land in France and reinforce their armies by the middle of 1918, the British and French attacked the German trenches at Arras, Vimy Ridge, and at Passchendaele at the cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties. Moreover, the bloody 1917 offensives, which gained next to no ground, undoubtedly led to the decreased morale that contributed to the French army mutinies during the Nivelle Offensive, a series of incidents that at one point threatened to unhinge the entire French army.

But if the offensive was so costly, then why were the Allies on the attack at all in 1917? The answer comes down to politics, and national honor, and the frustration with the fact that the Germans were sitting on French and Belgian soil, and an insistence that the war must be fought and won — and quickly. The Allies chose the strategic offensive when they would have been better off sitting back, building their strength, and waiting for the arrival of the American Expeditionary Force to tip the scales decisively in their favor.

This analysis is not mere Monday-morning quarterbacking. There were those who warned against the folly of the offensive at the time. In The World Crisis, Winston Churchill, lamenting the British generals’ choice to resume the offensive in October 1917 into the hellscape of Ypres, wrote:

It cannot be said that “the Soldiers”, that is to say the Staff, did not have their way. They tried their sombre experiment to its conclusion. They took all they required from Britain. They wore down alike the manhood and guns of the British Army almost to destruction. They did it in the face of the plainest warnings, and of arguments which they could not answer.

What does all this mean for Zelensky and Ukraine? It means that the best chance for Ukrainian victory, the regaining of its sovereign territory illegally annexed by the Kremlin, and peace on favorable terms is through the careful husbanding of Western support and the buildup of Ukraine’s armed forces via a defensive strategy. Over the short and medium term, Ukraine should deliberately welcome the wasting of Russian arms, blood, and treasure in the attack and hope for the slow cracking of Russian society and its political and economic foundations. With patience, Ukraine may then find an opportune time to regain the initiative and drive forward. But until that time, any Plan for Victory should focus on a careful and deliberate buildup of its strength.

Moreover, Zelensky shouldn’t be shy about saying this, at least in the context of conversations between friends and allies. Indeed, such a frank acknowledgement of the situation would very likely win him the extension of new rounds of Western support that a more aggressive strategy would not. Importantly, this is likely true no matter who wins the U.S. presidential election in November. And the good news here is that Zelensky and his defense minister, Rustem Umerov, have hinted at times that they understand this reality.

Credit should be given to Volodymyr Zelensky: His emphasis on “victory,” rather than a mere cessation of hostilities, is refreshing, almost shocking rhetoric from an allied leader. But a realistic Plan for Victory must be married to the resources and political will that is available now and that, crucially, will also be available at a later time.

The Ukrainian people have fought bravely since February 2022 and, indeed, since March 2014, when Russia first crossed the frontier and occupied Crimea and parts of the Donbas. But the mistakes of 1917 and 2023 must be avoided if Ukraine is to one day see its own version of the Hundred Days Offensive.