What does ‘victory’ for Ukraine look like?

This week in New York Volodymyr Zelensky will present Joe Biden with a ‘Victory Plan’ for Ukraine. But how to define what ‘victory’ actually means? A fundamental and fast-widening distance is opening up over that question between Zelensky and his western allies – as well as inside Ukraine itself.

Zelensky insists that the bottom line of a Ukrainian victory remains ‘the occupation army [being] driven out by force or diplomatically, in such a way that the country preserves its true independence and is freed from occupation’. He has also rejected the idea of a ceasefire, saying that any ‘freezing of the war or any other manipulations… will simply postpone Russian aggression to a later stage’. Even as Russia continues to steadily advance in Donbas, Zelensky and his lieutenants are still talking about winning.

Compare that with the cautious talk coming out of Washington that focuses instead on the consolidation of the front lines and of imminent peace talks. The latest tranche of US aid is intended ‘to put Ukraine in a strong position on the battlefield so that they are in a strong position at the negotiating table’, said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Part of the ‘substantial package’ of $717 million is military equipment Ukraine needs to help ‘stabilise’ the front and ensure that Russian forces are met with ‘stiff resistance’, he said. But most of the aid is designed to help repair Ukraine’s energy grid, provide food, shelter and medicine and for de-mining. That’s a very far cry from the two whopping $60 billion packages of mostly military aid authorised by the US in 2022 and early this year. And it’s a very far cry indeed from the decisive infusion of main battle tanks, F-16 jets, missile defences and cruise missiles that Zelensky says he needs.