For weeks, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has pushed Western leaders to support his so-called victory plan, which he claims will end the country’s war with Russia next year. But Mr. Zelensky has received only lukewarm rhetorical support.

No country has agreed to allow Ukraine to fire Western long-range missiles at military targets deep inside Russia. Nor has any major power publicly endorsed inviting Ukraine into NATO while the war is raging.

By those measures, Mr. Zelensky’s lobbying tour of the United States and Europe over the past six weeks could be seen as a failure.

But the real audience for the plan might be at home, some military analysts and diplomats say. Mr. Zelensky can use his hard sell — including a recent address to Parliament — to show Ukrainians that he has done all he can, prepare them for the possibility that Ukraine might have to make a deal and give Ukrainians a convenient scapegoat: the West.

With waning Western support, losses along the eastern front and in the Kursk region of Russia, and a looming U.S. election that could mean a drastically different policy toward Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky might have few other options.

“He has to go cap in hand to push the plan, sort of carve out a position and then say at home, having asked, that this is now what we have to do,” said Michael John Williams, a professor of international relations at Syracuse University and a former adviser to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He added: “At least he can say he’s tried. He’s exhausted the possibilities.”