A visibly agitated President Volodymyr Zelensky defiantly denied on Sunday that the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine had entered a “stalemate,” assuring in an extensive interview with US media that Moscow has not “checkmated” Kiev, and that Ukraine still has many “different plans” to maintain the initiative.
“Our military are coming up with different plans, with different operations in order to move forward faster and to strike the Russian Federation unexpectedly,” Zelensky said, in stark contradiction to Zaluzhnyi’s comments about the counteroffensive’s utter failure to penetrate Russian defenses.
“As far as the situation on the front is concerned, of course I cannot provide all the details to you but nevertheless we are holding the initiative in our hands. You can imagine what over two years of a full-scale war is like. Everybody gets tired. Even the iron gets tired,” Zelensky said. “I don’t think that this is a stalemate…We have done a lot,” he assured.
Zelensky stressed that Ukraine could not proceed with its operations “barehanded,” “without relevant, proper weapons,” calling for more aid and assuring that money sent to Ukraine is “not aid to Ukraine,” but support for the US and the EU themselves, because Kiev is “defending our joint values.”
The Ukrainian president rejected any possibility of negotiations with Russia, saying he didn’t “want to make any dialogue with terrorists,” and dismissing former President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to end the conflict in “24 hours.” Instead, the Ukrainian leader suggested, it would take him “24 minutes to explain [to] President Trump that he can’t manage this war.”
Western media have taken note of Zelensky’s shift in rhetoric, with one outlet pointing out that while the Ukrainian leader once assured the West of a speedy victory, now the message seems to be geared toward asking for more support to prevent the conflict from dragging on indefinitely, playing on the West’s fears of a protracted conflict with Moscow that cannot be won.
Planting the Seeds of Doubt
But some observers have come out ahead of Zelensky, kicking off what seems like a carefully crafted campaign to prepare Western publics for defeat, or a least a “rethink” of what “victory” in Ukraine looks like.
“Ukraine today finds itself worse off than it was last November. Its troops are exhausted and depleted, its weapons stocks are running low, and Western publics are more polarized over further support,” one pundit writing in a major US newspaper wrote.
“Ukraine’s counteroffensive was supposed to sustain political support for Kiev by proving that it could reconquer lost territory. Now, supporters of Ukraine might need to make the inverse argument: Ukraine is not reconquering substantial territory, and aid is needed indefinitely to forestall a devastating defeat.”
Washington “might need to pivot from dreaming of victory to preparing to live with a stalemate,” since “there is virtually no appetite in the United States for direct war with Russia. Russian victory in Ukraine would be a terrible blow to US interests, but not terrible enough to risk nuclear war,” the observer stressed.
This doom and gloom attitude isn’t unique, but joins a growing chorus of media and public figures waking up to the idea that the West can’t succeed in its effort to use Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia.
Last week, shortly before the publication of Zaluzhnyi's bombshell critique, a major US news magazine ran a story citing members of Zelensky’s inner circle criticizing his “stubbornness” and refusal to entertain any possibility of a peace deal with Russia, even as commanders complained privately about being forced to attack Russian positions without adequate troops, weapons or artillery support.
West Exhausted by Ukraine
“In my opinion, the change of narrative from an ‘unconditional victory’ to something vaguer does not invalidate the usual request for military aid that Zelensky makes to the West,” Tiberio Graziani, chairman of Vision & Global Trends, a Rome-based geopolitical affairs think tank, told Sputnik. “The substantial fact is that the conflict has become objectively prolonged and there is no end in sight, also due to the poor initiatives of the major leaders of the West.”
“I have the impression that not only Western public[s] are tired of the current conflict, but also the leaderships, both European and US,” the observer emphasized, pointing out that along with general exhaustion, the shift in attitudes relates next year’s elections in the European Union and the United States.
“European politicians and [President] Biden cannot present themselves to voters with a war, or rather two, if we also consider the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is difficult to present oneself to one’s potential voters with two open crises and, above all, without the prospect of certain victory,” Graziani said.
“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has overshadowed the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in Western media. Western public opinion [is] gradually becoming more aware of the failure of their governments to manage these two wars than of what we can attribute to Kiev’s armed forces,” Graziani stressed.
The shift in messaging by Zelensky and some Western media comes months after independent observers did the same thing.
In late September, an anonymous US intelligence official told veteran US journalist Seymour Hersh that the Ukraine war was “over” and that “Russia has won.”
“There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going. The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue to offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the BS that is being authored by the Biden White House,” the intelligence official added.
Barely a month later, Zaluzhnyi’s bombshell comments, Zelensky’s shift in tone and Western media’s new language redefining what "victory" means have served to confirm what Moscow has been saying all along: that it is “impossible” for the West to defeat Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine, because Moscow, unlike Kiev's Western sponsors, is fighting for its vital interests.