The showdown bodes ill for Ukraine's future should Donald Trump be elected president of the US on November 5. As Volodymyr Zelensky is due to present his "plan for victory" to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in Washington on Thursday, September 26, he was hoping to do the same with the Republican candidate. But the billionaire's latest outburst left him in no doubt: "We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal, Zelensky," Trump said at a campaign rally on Wednesday. "Every time he's come to our country, he's left with $60 billion. I think he's the best salesman on the planet," the former president said while in North Carolina.
The American press reported that Trump, who promised to find a solution to the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, didn't appreciate the Ukrainian president's assertion in the New Yorker magazine on Sunday that the Republican candidate "doesn't really know how to stop this war."
In the midst of the escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, Zelensky has been busy in the US in recent days, as well as at the United Nations General Assembly, trying to capture the attention of his interlocutors and widen the circle of his country's supporters. On Sunday, he visited an arms factory in Pennsylvania, a pivotal state dominated by the Democrats, again incurring the wrath of the Republicans who are anxious to limit US aid to Kyiv.
"The Ukrainians will never accept" a possible peace agreement with Moscow that would be "imposed" on them, warned the Ukrainian president in an applauded speech at the UN on Wednesday. "Russia can only be forced into peace, and that's exactly what needs to be done," he had said the day before, at a Security Council meeting devoted to Ukraine. This is in fact the aim of the "plan for victory" that Zelensky was to detail on Thursday. Concocted in the utmost secrecy in Kyiv over the past few weeks, this plan seeks to remobilize the West, led by the US, in its military and economic support for the Ukrainian war effort. In a face-to-face meeting, Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron discussed the best way to continue supporting Ukraine, despite the fact that Ukraine's application to join NATO continues to divide the allies.
The "plan for victory" also aims to consolidate the diplomatic front, particularly with southern countries, in the hope of "forcing Vladimir Putin's Russia" to accept negotiations for a lasting ceasefire. All this in the midst of the campaign for the American presidential election, which polls predict will be very close between Trump and Kamala Harris.
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