West tells Ukraine it can’t afford victory – WSJ
Ukraine’s Western backers have told Kiev that they can’t hand over enough money and weapons to defeat Russia, and that Vladimir Zelensky will need to “come up with a more realistic plan,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy met with Ukrainian officials in Kiev on Wednesday to “discuss how best to define a Ukrainian victory and what aid it will need to achieve that,” anonymous officials told the newspaper.
Behind the scenes, unnamed European diplomats claimed that Kiev is being forced to downgrade its expectations, as Western nations tire of funneling endless taxpayer cash into the conflict. “Kiev has been told that a full Ukrainian victory would require the West to provide hundreds of billions of dollars worth of support, something neither Washington nor Europe can realistically do,” the WSJ stated.
The US and its European allies have provided Ukraine with more than $200 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian aid since the conflict began, with an additional $110 billion pending, according to figures from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has insisted since the start of the conflict that he will use military force to restore the country’s 1991 borders, a territorial claim that includes Crimea. This aim was dismissed as unachievable by the US more than a year ago. While Zelensky also claims that this goal can be achieved by diplomatic means, as spelled out in his ten-point ‘peace plan’, Moscow maintains that Kiev must accept the “reality” that four of its former regions are now part of the Russian Federation, and that Crimea is “not up for discussion.”
Despite the slim prospects of retaking Ukraine’s former territory, Zelensky said in August that he would present a “victory plan” to US President Joe Biden later this month. Zelensky suggested that this plan likely involves asking the US for more cash and weapons, saying that victory would depend on Washington giving Kiev “what is in this plan or not.”
However, Ukraine’s costly incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region has weakened its battlefield position. Instead of pulling troops from the Donbass front line to repel the incursion, as generals in Kiev had hoped, Moscow went on the attack, and its forces have since captured multiple settlements en route to the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
Blinken and Lammy pledged nearly $1.5 billion in additional aid to Ukraine on Wednesday, with the former declaring that “we want Ukraine to win.” However, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal wrote on Telegram that talks with the two Western diplomats had been “intense.”
Back in Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby insisted that Blinken did not visit Kiev to push Zelensky into accepting a compromise with Russia. “Certainly a negotiated end is the most likely outcome here, but when that happens, and under what conditions and circumstances, that’s going to be up to President Zelensky,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
