Zelensky insists that after a tough year on the battlefield, Ukraine will emerge victorious

President Volodymyr Zelensky has pushed back against doubts about Ukraine’s battlefield prospects and the support of its allies. He told reporters on Tuesday that his country is not losing the war and is willing to negotiate with Russia, but only on its own terms.

The Ukrainian military fell far short in a counter-offensive over the summer, but Mr. Zelenskiy emphasized that it has strengthened its air defenses and achieved naval successes in the Black Sea, while Russia has suffered little other than heavy losses from its own war effort. this year.

“Russia failed to achieve any results,” Mr Zelensky said at a news conference promoting the opening of talks with the European Union on possible Ukrainian membership. The negotiations announced last week offer a rare glimmer of hope after months of diplomatic and military setbacks.

The shock of the Russian invasion in February 2022, the initial setbacks and subsequent victories of the first year of the war created a remarkable unity within Ukraine and among its supporters. But the second year exacted enormous human and financial costs without much movement on the ground, leaving Ukraine in a state of limbo in the fight, in relations with its allies, and in internal politics.

Looming over the country’s battle with Russia are delayed decisions on military and financial aid from the United States and the European Union. The United States has provided about half of Ukraine’s weapons and ammunition directly to the military and about a quarter of its foreign aid to Ukraine’s budget, while Europe has taken the lead in providing financial aid.

But Republicans in Congress have backed President Biden’s request for an additional $64 billion to support Ukraine, along with aid to Israel and Taiwan, saying they will not approve it without reforms to immigration policy and border security.

And a European Union decision on a $54 billion multi-year financial aid package for Ukraine was postponed until January as Hungary blocked a unanimous decision by the 27-member bloc.

Mr Zelensky said he expected both Europe and the United States to deliver. “I think we will not be betrayed by our partners,” he said. “I am confident that the United States will not abandon us.”

He offered his most extensive commentary yet on the consequences for Ukraine continuing its war against Russia if Donald J. Trump – who has a favorable view of the Kremlin and a negative view of Kiev – were to win next year’s US presidential election.

Without mentioning Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Zelensky said that if a future U.S. president were to pursue policies “that would be colder or more inward-looking, if they were to make more cuts, these signals would have a very significant impact on the price of the economy.” war.” He compared a possible withdrawal by the United States to the removal of a crucial part of the machinery of global security.

“The mechanism is starting to break,” he said.

On Monday, the Biden administration said it would announce just one additional military aid package among spending already approved by Congress before funding dries up.

“Once that is complete,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, “we will no longer have any additional authority available to us.” However, some military aid could still come from a separate program overseen by the Pentagon.

There is also a sense of drift at home in what has been a long and debilitating conflict.

Mr. Zelenskiy said military commanders have recommended that Ukraine mobilize 450,000 to 500,000 troops next year — a huge number for a country of about 40 million people — to support the war effort and give soldiers who have fought continuously for 22 months a chance to to turn away from the front. . The Army General Staff, he said, has not provided a definitive plan with precise figures for a mobilization that would overcome widespread draft avoidance and growing hesitancy to engage in deadly trench warfare.

The call, Mr. Zelensky said, will be “sensitive” given these and other serious challenges facing Ukraine.

He occasionally betrayed fits of anger during his news conference, lashing out at a reporter who questioned why he had not formed a national unity government with opposition parties.

Both sides have maintained their willingness to negotiate peace – but only on terms the other side deems unacceptable. Russia is demanding recognition of Russian sovereignty over four Ukrainian provinces it now only partly controls, as well as Crimea, which it seized in 2014.

Ukraine has gathered international support for its own 10-point peace formula, and Mr. Zelensky reiterated on Tuesday his willingness to negotiate on those terms. His government’s efforts are seen partly as an attempt to counter Russian diplomatic influence among developing countries and partly as positioning for talks. When the proposal is finalized and approved by the dozens of countries now in talks, it will be handed over to Russia, Mr. Zelensky said.

He said Russia now appears disinclined to negotiate. “We don’t see any request from Russia,” he said. “Not in their rhetoric, not in their action. All we see is a shameless willingness to kill.”

At home, tensions between Mr. Zelensky and the country’s top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, have spilled into the public eye, fueling concerns about a rift between Ukraine’s political and military leadership. The general is seen as a potential rival to Zelensky, although he has denied any political ambition.

After The economist published an interview last month in which General Zaluzhny said the fighting along the front would stall without new weapons, Mr. Zelensky quickly contradicted that assessment of a stalled war. The two have not been seen together in public since.

Mr. Zelensky made little effort on Tuesday to smooth over the rivalry. He said General Zaluzhny served as an appointee like others in his government. “I am grateful for some and ashamed of others,” he said, without clarifying his thoughts about the general.

The general has also publicly expressed his grievances; On Monday he criticized the president’s dismissal last summer of the heads of military recruiting agencies over corruption allegations. The general said the fired directors “were professionals – they knew how to do it, and now they are gone.”

Mr. Zelensky’s once-sky-high approval ratings have fallen. a poll A publication this month by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that 62 percent of Ukrainians trust Mr. Zelensky, up from 84 percent in December last year.

Confidence in General Zaluzhny now stands at 88 percent, the poll showed.

Ukrainian leaders see some reason for hope in talks to join the European Union, which would draw the country closer to economic and political integration with the West and out of Russia’s sphere of influence.

The battle at sea has also been successful, even though the land war has come to a standstill.

Deploying an innovative fleet of exploding naval drones and cruise missiles supplied by Britain and France, Ukraine has damaged or sunk dozens of Russian ships and forced the Black Sea Fleet to partially relocate from its home port of Sevastopol, Crimea.

By firing Patriot air defense missiles, Ukraine has shot down some of the most advanced new weapons in the Russian arsenal: hypersonic missiles that the Russians call Kinzhals, or daggers, and are known in Western militaries as killjoys.

Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky said, will hold its own in the fight against Russia. Unity, he said, “is our knowledge and has helped us to maintain ourselves since the beginning of the war.”

Invoking the spirit of the land, he said, may sound banal, but “you have to keep some banalities just to have the ultimate banality of life.”