Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continued his tour of Europe on Thursday and Friday, in a bid to persuade the leaders of large European nations to back his “victory plan” against Russia—a desire for more Western weapons and the ability to fire them deep within Russian territory.
Zelensky’s whirlwind trip to London, Paris, and Rome on Thursday, October 10th, and the Vatican City and Berlin on Friday, October 11th, came after the cancellation of the high-level meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which was to take place on Saturday in Germany.
It was there that the Ukrainian president was going to present his plan to European leaders, as well as to U.S. President Joe Biden, who eventually stayed at home to handle preparations for the hurricane that swept through the state of Florida earlier this week.
Zelensky is courting the leaders of Europe for more weapons to not only halt the marching Russian troops who are slowly advancing and occupying Ukrainian settlements, but also to eventually defeat the Russian army and take back the land it has invaded since February 2022.
Russian forces have made advances in recent months across the eastern frontline and targeted the war-battered country’s power grid. Moscow said on Friday that its forces had captured the frontline villages of Zhelanne Druge and Ostrivske, the latest in a string of territorial gains for Russia.
The Ukrainian president has claimed that firing missiles deep within Russian territory, targeting weapons depots and other military locations, would be a game-changer in the war, but his Western allies have so far only allowed Kyiv to use their missiles for launching attacks on Russia in border regions.
Though the details of his “victory plan” have not yet been made public, Zelensky has said that it aims to “create the right conditions for a just end to the war.” Media reports have claimed that it contains nothing new: just Zelensky demanding more military aid and permission to fire long-range Western weapons at targets in Russia.
Joe Biden has so far refused to agree, fearing that it would provoke Moscow, whose president Vladimir Putin recently revised the Russian nuclear doctrine to deter the West from being too aggressive.
American-made ATACMS, British-made Storm Shadow missiles, and French-supplied SCALP missiles have already been used by the Ukrainians to strike Russian military targets in and around the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
Zelensky and the Ukrainian leadership have been trying to prove that Moscow’s “red lines” are nothing more than a bluff, citing the recent Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Kursk region as evidence and saying that attacking Russia has no consequences, despite threats made by Putin.
However, Western European leaders are hesitant to go one step further.
Following Zelensky’s meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday, the PM’s office stated that “there’s no change in the government’s policy on the use of long-range missiles,” and that ministers were looking at other ways of supporting Ukraine. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is also staunchly against Ukraine using its Storm Shadows to hit Russia, adding that she was determined to help Ukraine for as long as necessary.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been even more cautious, and has so far refused to send long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine. But Berlin has flip-flopped about military aid to Ukraine since the outbreak of the war. Germany was initially only willing to send helmets, but pressure from NATO allies and the hawkish Greens within the government persuaded Social Democrat Olaf Scholz to allow the delivery of anti-aircraft systems and battle tanks.
On Friday, at a meeting with Zelensky in Berlin, the chancellor promised further weapons deliveries worth €1.4 billion for Kyiv. The new aid includes air defence systems, artillery, and drones.
France has been the only Western nation so far that has allowed the use of its cruise missiles to strike targets in Russia. In Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country is still fully behind Kyiv, despite political difficulties at home that have raised questions about how much help France will be able to give in the coming months.
