Brussels: President Volodymyr Zelensky was headed to Brussels Thursday to defend his \u201cvictory plan\u201d for Ukraine to both EU leaders and NATO defense ministers, with the outlook on the battlefield bleak in Kyiv\u2019s battle to repel the Russian invasion.
\nMore than two and a half years into the war, Kyiv is losing new territory almost daily in its eastern Donbas region and under mounting pressure to forge an exit strategy \u2014 which it says must start with ramped-up Western support.
\n\u201cNow we are on the way to Brussels,\u201d Zelensky said in a video posted as he made the trip. \u201cI will present the victory plan, our tool for forcing Russia to peace. All European leaders will hear how we need to strengthen our position. We need to end this war justly.\u201d
\nZelensky heads first to the EU summit where he will address the media in the late morning, with a joint press conference with NATO chief Mark Rutte later in the day \u2014 wrapping the first of two days of talks between the Alliance\u2019s 32 member states.
\nWhile calling it a \u201cstrong signal,\u201d the NATO secretary-general cautioned Wednesday he was not endorsing Zelensky\u2019s \u201cwhole plan\u201d \u2014 which calls first and foremost for an immediate invitation to join the US-led alliance, a plea widely seen as unrealistic.
\nNATO countries have declared Ukraine to be on an \u201cirreversible path\u201d to membership.
\nBut the United States and Germany have led opposition to immediate entry, believing it would effectively put the alliance at war with nuclear-armed Russia.
\nWashington\u2019s ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, hammered the message home Wednesday, saying: \u201cWe are not at the point right now where the alliance is talking about issuing an invitation in the short term.\u201d
\nThe US position is unlikely to shift whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins the White House on November 5 \u2014 though there are fears a second Trump term could upend the support Ukraine receives from NATO\u2019s biggest power.
\nInsiders agree the elephant in the room at the NATO talks will be the contest playing out across the Atlantic.
\n\u201cWe are in a kind of waiting mode,\u201d summed up one NATO diplomat.
\nPressed on the membership question, Rutte reiterated NATO\u2019s party line, saying: \u201cI cannot today now exactly sketch out what the path will be, but I am absolutely confident that in the future, Ukraine will join us.\u201d
\nBut Ukraine\u2019s allies are well aware that time is of the essence.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a very difficult period, the worst since the beginning of the invasion,\u201d said a second NATO diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
\nIn addition to membership, Zelensky\u2019s plan rejects any territorial concessions and calls for Western allies to lift restrictions on using donated long-range weapons to target Russian military sites.
\nAccording to Zelensky, an annexe \u2014 shared with the United States, Britain, France, Italy and Germany \u2014 involves deploying a \u201cnon-nuclear strategic deterrence package\u201d on Ukrainian territory to discourage future Russian attacks.
\nNone of the proposals have so far earned public backing from Western capitals.
\nFor NATO in the meantime, Rutte said the focus was on keeping \u201cmassive military aid moving into Ukraine\u201d in order \u201cto make sure that if ever one day Zelensky and his team decide to discuss with Russia how to end this, that he will do this from a position of strength.\u201d
\nFor a third NATO official, the setbacks inflicted on Russian President Vladimir Putin since the invasion are already sufficient to justify seeking a negotiated outcome \u2014 rather than letting the war drag on indefinitely.
\n\u201cThere are various ways to define victory or to define defeat,\u201d they said. \u201cHe has lost already because his initial aim was to capture Kyiv, to kick out the government, to send Zelensky in exile and to install a puppet regime.\u201d
\nOn the eve of the NATO meeting, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for exploring ways to end the war \u2014 potentially including talks with Putin.
\nBut according to an alliance diplomat other voices still fear that anything short of an outright victory for Kyiv would spell \u201cdisaster\u201d \u2014 ensuring that an emboldened Russia does not stop there.
\nHigh hopes were pinned on a meeting of Ukraine\u2019s backers including Washington at the Ramstein US air base in western Germany, but the meeting was called off and may not be rescheduled before the US election.
\nIn the meantime, as Russian forces pound its cities and infrastructure, Ukraine is pleading for stepped-up air defense systems \u2014 but no new announcements were expected from NATO on that front.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brussels: President Volodymyr Zelensky was headed to Brussels Thursday to defend his \u201cvictory plan\u201d for Ukraine to both EU leaders and NATO defense ministers, with the outlook on the battlefield bleak in Kyiv\u2019s battle to repel the Russian invasion. More than two and a half years into the war, Kyiv is losing new territory almost …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":71764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71770,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71752\/revisions\/71770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}