U.S. officials have been briefed on Ukraine’s “Victory Plan” and are confident that the proposal could bring an end to the yearslong conflict.
The plan promises to bring about a “real, just peace,” according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but Kyiv has so far remained tight-lipped about the specifics of its strategy. More than 900 days into the war, many observers remain skeptical about a clean end to the back-and-forth, but the remarks from U.S. officials signal that Washington is still hopeful for a peaceful resolution.
“We have seen President Zelensky’s peace plan. We think it lays out a strategy and a plan that can work,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
When asked about Thomas-Greenfield’s comments during a Tuesday briefing, Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesperson, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken had been briefed on “elements of the plan” during his visit to Ukraine last week, and that the department shared the ambassador’s assessment.
Newsweek has contacted the Ukrainian government for further information on the Victory Plan.
On Monday, Zelensky said that the “military, political, diplomatic and economic” aspects of his Victory Plan had been ironed out, and that the strategy would be presented to Ukraine’s allies next week.
“There is nothing impossible in this plan. Over 90 percent has already been written out,” Zelensky said. “Together, this package can ensure the right development of the situation not only for Ukraine, but for everyone in the world who values international law.”
So far, Ukraine has disclosed few aspects of the plan, which was first announced in late August, though officials have been clear on the lengths Kyiv is willing to go to secure a lasting peace.
On Tuesday, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Presidential Office, told Current Time that the plan involved no territorial concessions to Russia or any form of ceasefire, which he said would only allow Moscow to replenish its military resources and “continue with the third stage of the more massive killings of civilians in Ukraine.”
This echoed comments that Dmytro Lytvyn, a communications adviser to Zelensky, made on Sunday in response to a Bild article that suggested Ukraine was willing to “accept local ceasefires on certain sections of the front” to advance the Victory Plan.
“Bild spread a fake,” Lytvyn said. “Bild has not seen the Victory Plan, and of the few people who are currently involved by the president in the preparation of the Victory Plan, none of them spoke to Bild.”
Speaking at the Ukraine 2024 Independence forum in Kyiv on August 27, Zelensky said the plan would be presented to President Joe Biden in September and to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
During the conference, Zelensky also said Ukraine’s ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk region was “one of the points of Ukraine’s Victory Plan,” adding that the operation would factor into a peace summit Ukraine plans to convene in November before the U.S. presidential election.
This would follow the June summit held in Switzerland, to which representatives from Moscow were not invited.
Zelensky has said that Russia “should be” represented at the second conference, but Russian officials have said the Kursk operation proscribed any possibility of peace talks between the two nations.
Source: Newsweek
