• Geopolitics
• NATO
• United States
• Russia
• Ukraine

October 25, 2024, 11:57 AM View Comments ()

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Western capitals this month to drum up support for his “victory plan.” The plan’s central planks, which Zelensky outlined to Ukraine’s parliament last week, are simple. Ukraine’s allies should formally invite it to join NATO and provide more weapons to push back the Russian assault. Only then will Russian President Vladimir Putin come to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, Putin is following his own victory plan. With his forces suffering their highest casualty rates of the war in September, he recently ordered the conscription of 133,000 new servicemembers in the autumn draft starting Oct. 1 and announced a 25 percent increase in defense spending, which will account for a staggering total of 32 percent of the Russia’s 2025 federal budget.

And despite the successful Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region in early August, Russian forces continue to advance in the Donbas region, where the defenders remain outmanned and outgunned, especially since the United States has cut the rate of weapons deliveries.

Given Washington’s continued refusal to allow the Ukrainians to use U.S.-made or designed weapons to strike military and logistical targets inside Russia, the country is also fighting with one hand tied behind its back.

Yet even as Washington denies Ukraine the means to defend itself effectively for fear of being drawn into an escalatory war with Russia, Zelensky is expected to offer a viable plan for victory. This is perverse. If Western governments are sincere when they say that Ukraine’s fight is essential to their security and to the credibility of what’s left of the international order, then it is time they were clearer about their own definition of victory and the support they will provide to this end.

To date, Kyiv’s allies have been unwilling to do more than back Zelensky’s announced goal of restoring all of Ukraine’s occupied lands, including the reclamation of Crimea. They say they don’t want to undermine the Ukrainian people’s right to determine their own future—a right for which they are sacrificing blood and treasure.

But with no prospect of Ukraine achieving its ultimate objective without significantly more aid—and with previously solid and popular Ukrainian support for driving the Russians out of Ukraine eroding—Western declarations of support have become a fig leaf to hide the lack of serious thinking and planning in Western capitals for what a credible victory would entail.

This reticence has now become politically self-defeating. In the United States, the Biden administration’s failure to define victory is dragging U.S. support for Ukraine into the vicious partisan politics leading up to November’s presidential election.

In Europe, populist leaders who were sympathetic to Putin even before he invaded Ukraine are gaining traction by arguing that support for Ukraine is a waste of precious resources. Putin is encouraging these divisions by authorizing even more brazen sabotage operations in Europe and making even more outlandish threats of nuclear escalation that he hopes will leach support from Kyiv.

Meanwhile, Putin believes that he can escalate the war at little risk to Russia. According to the U.S., Ukrainian, and South Korean governments, North Korea—which already provides at least half of the artillery rounds used by Russia against Ukraine—is sending thousands of soldiers to support its ally’s war effort.

Unless Western governments say what they mean by Ukraine winning and what actions they will take to help bring this about, they could end up contributing to the Ukrainian defeat they claim to want to prevent.

A Western definition of victory should be simple, and it should tally closely with Kyiv’s. Ukraine must remain a sustainably sovereign democracy with the right to the European future its citizens are fighting for—and which Putin is determined to deny them. A successful Ukraine must also have credible defenses against a long-term Russian threat. This outcome can be achieved without Ukraine recovering 100 percent of its sovereign territory militarily now.

But the most important prerequisite for this sort of victory is stopping the Russian advance. To help Ukraine achieve this, its allies should follow one simple principle: The more Russian forces advance, the more meaningful their military support will be. On this basis, at a minimum, the United States should immediately give Ukraine the green light to use Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles against Russian forces involved in efforts to seize more Ukrainian territory, even if they are located deep inside Russia. This would include fuel and ammunition depots, as well as key transportation infrastructure and logistical hubs serving the frontline.

As a demonstration of political will, a coalition of European governments—those possessing the requisite popular and political support—should also send small numbers of noncombat troops into Ukraine. These would be away from the front line, but close enough to deliver more efficient training to Ukrainian forces, better logistical support, and faster equipment repairs.

And if Russia sustains its attacks on Ukrainian civilian and industrial infrastructure, its allies should use their own forces, whether based inside NATO territory or inside Ukraine, to help Ukraine destroy Russian drones and missiles flying over its sovereign territory.

Putin would undoubtedly condemn such actions. But because none of them involve NATO forces posing a direct threat to Russia, they do not justify further retaliation against NATO members.

Being explicit about protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty by military means must go hand in hand with the necessary allied political support for it to thrive as a sustainably sovereign state.

Although Ukraine’s integration into NATO should be the long-term goal, this will not be possible while the country is at war. Even if peace is restored, the necessary unanimous support among NATO members for admission might not be secured. The near-term priority, therefore, should be to formalize the military support described above as part of the bilateral security agreements between Ukraine and its most committed supporters, such as the Nordic states, the Baltic states, Poland, Britain, France, and the Netherlands.

French, Italian, and German leadership will be key on another front: accelerating Ukraine’s membership in the European Union, ensuring steady, concrete progress toward full accession. After all, Ukrainians cannot be expected to cease the struggle to retake all their land without a substantial commitment to the free part of Ukraine. By ensuring Ukraine’s political and economic survival, as well as its long-term prosperity within the EU’s powerful institutional embrace, EU members would help Ukraine keep alive the prospect that reunification might take place peacefully in the future.

Taking these difficult military and political steps is in the fundamental interests of Europe and the United States. If Ukraine loses, Europeans will be under heightened threat from Russia at their borders. European failure to come together successfully against a common external threat will undermine the internal cohesion necessary for the effective functioning of the EU. And the pledges made by NATO to support its democratic neighbor will have proved hollow, weakening trust in the alliance and the credibility of U.S. deterrence worldwide.

The survival of a sustainably sovereign Ukraine is a matter of political will. Ukrainians have abundantly demonstrated theirs by putting their lives on the line. The central obstacle to this victory is a mismatch of will between Russia and Ukraine’s allies. Putin is demonstrating greater political will to convert Ukraine into a vassal or failed state than the United States and Europe are to supporting its survival as a sustainably sovereign country.

If its allies do not step forward now with a sense of the victory they want—and how they will achieve and uphold it—Ukraine’s agony will not only continue, but it might also get worse. And tragically, it could all be for naught.