President @ZelenskyyUa told allies that #Ukraine must be in a position of strength before any peace talks with Russia, as he explained his victory plan to EU leaders and @NATO defense chiefs in Brussels. Our reporter in Belgium, Marek Steele, has more on the topic. pic.twitter.com/dCSFUkfGo3
— TVP World (@TVPWorld_com) October 17, 2024
Previously: Zelensky Finally Reveals “Victory Plan”: NATO Membership in Exchange for Natural Resources
This story just never ends.
I am so bored of the Ukraine War.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged European leaders to issue an “immediate invitation” to Ukraine to join Nato as he pitched his “victory plan”, which he said would end the war in 2025 at the latest.
Addressing the EU’s 27 leaders at a Brussels summit, Ukraine’s president outlined his five-point plan, which urges allies to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons on military targets inside Ukraine’s occupied territories and Russia, as well as to help increase air defences.
Ukraine wants an immediate invitation to join Nato, with membership later, but in the transatlantic alliance this is widely seen as unrealistic.
Zelenskyy’s visit comes at a perilous moment for Ukraine, which is steadily losing ground to Russian forces in the eastern Donbas, ahead of a daunting winter that also brings the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House.
I thought they were winning and couldn’t stop winning because this was like Star Wars and the good guys always win?
Speaking to reporters, Zelenskyy described how he gave Trump a detailed account of the 1994 Budapest memorandum signed by Russia, the US and the UK, under which Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed to give up their nuclear arsenals, inherited from the Soviet Union, in exchange for guarantees their sovereignty would be respected “within existing borders”.
In a rhetorical flourish he said Ukraine faced a choice between resuming nuclear weapons and Nato membership, adding: “We are not choosing nuclear weapons, we are choosing Nato, and I think that Donald Trump heard me.”
Zelenskyy declined to give further details of his conversation with the former US president, who has repeatedly claimed he could end the war in a day, without offering any explanation. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, has set out a peace deal that would mean Kyiv giving up large swaths of occupied land to Russia.
The Ukrainian leader also said his intelligence services believed 10,000 North Korean soldiers were preparing to join the war on the Russian side, “a really urgent” matter he said he had discussed with the US president, Joe Biden.
…
In an attempt to get the US on side, Ukraine is offering, after the war, to replace US soldiers stationed in Europe with Ukrainian units trained to Nato standards. “After this war, Ukraine will have one of the most experienced and largest military contingents,” states the text of Zelenskyy’s peace plan. “By replacing certain US contingent with the Ukrainian contingent, the United States will be able to use its released troops to perform other security tasks outside Europe.”
That’s a cute idea.
He should have added something like: “And I am officially inviting every American to my birthday party at Dave & Buster’s.”