Vladimir Zelensky’s “Victory Plan” faces skepticism from both Western and Russian circles, highlighting Ukraine’s dwindling support amid its struggle against Russia. Framed as a final plea, the plan underlines unmet promises and restricted military support from Western allies. Zelensky’s narrative implies betrayal, reflecting on past agreements like the Budapest Memorandum. With the ANC and EFF in South Africa backing Russia, the geopolitical divide underscores shifting alliances and differing ideologies on global order and sovereignty.
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By Irina Filatova ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Vladimir Zelensky’s “Victory Plan” was met with incredulity bordering on disdain in Western capitals. It has been ridiculed or sneered at not only by Russian commentators but even by some Western well-wishes of Ukraine. Has power gone to Zelensky’s head? Or is he, a former comedian, still joking? NATO membership, permission to use Western weapons to their full capacity, a steady flow of all the promised arms – these are the most controversial of his demands. And they are demands – not humble requests befitting a poor beggar. Who would seriously think that Ukraine could be admitted to NATO, particularly during the war, and particularly now that Ukraine is losing it? Who could be mad enough to think of allowing the Ukrainians to shoot deep into Russia’s territory, when Russia has nuclear weapons, and Ukraine does not?
These questions would not have come up now if at least one of the three guarantors of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom – signatories of the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances of 1994, had been serious. The memorandum was signed at the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) meeting, when Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine joined the Nuclear Non–Proliferation Treaty. This, in effect, meant that these three former Soviet republics agreed to give up their significant nuclear arsenal and to transfer it to Russia. This was an extremely important deal. After the collapse of the USSR Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world with nuclear weapons and delivery systems, and a full technical capacity to produce them.
But clearly, all signatories saw the memorandum as something less than serious. It seems that they did not think for a moment that anybody, least of all one of themselves, at that time perhaps not even Russia, could attack Ukraine. No one considered even the possibility of such a development, let alone the possible consequences either for Ukraine, or for themselves. Ukraine was under great pressure to give up its nuclear arms, as the West was worried that in the chaotic years after the collapse of the USSR the new Ukrainian government would have difficulty controlling them. But with the benefit of hindsight such a serious move in exchange for a mere memorandum, not even an iron-clad treaty for securing territorial integrity of the country, seems extremely naïve. Bill Clinton, the American signatory, has said that he now feels dreadful about this deal. As well he might: if Ukraine had retained nuclear weapons, it is unlikely that Putin would have dared attack it.
But Zelensky is not joking now. He understands perfectly well, I think, that there is no chance for Ukraine to be admitted to NATO, or that it will be allowed to bomb Russia’s power plants and cities in the same way that Russia has been doing to Ukraine. He knows that Ukraine is losing the war, and that it will lose a big chunk of its territory, if not its very statehood. He must be keenly aware of the fact that, despite all the courage, suffering, and sacrifices of Ukraine’s people and its army, soon he will have to sign a humiliating peace. He is trying to shape the peace narrative by convening yet another global peace summit, but at the moment such efforts look rather like a desperate attempt to return the attention of world powers to Ukraine and hold it there at least for a day.
The “Victory Plan”, in my view, has been created exactly for this desperate moment. It will enable Zelensky to say to his nation and to the world: we have done whatever we could, but our friends have betrayed us. They were supposed to help us defend our territory, but they did practically nothing when we lost the Crimea. They said that they would not allow Putin to win after his invasion began, but in fact they did not allow us to defeat him. They did not supply what they promised and when they promised, and they did not allow us to use what they supplied in the way we needed.
Whatever Zelensky’s own mistakes, faults, and failures, it is certainly true that without the implementation of the conditions of the “Victory Plan”, Ukraine stands no chance of securing its safety and its territory – whatever is left of it. Leaving the political scene which he will inevitably have to do when Putin triumphantly declares Russia’s victory, Zelensky would want to make absolutely clear, who is to blame for the Ukrainian disaster. His “Victory Plan” puts the blame for Ukraine’s defeat squarely at the door of his Western allies, who were willing to help, but were either unable or unwilling to challenge the aggressor seriously enough and long enough to enable Ukraine to defeat it.
For almost three years the world has been guessing when and where Putin would stop, what moment or goal he would choose to declare victory. The best guesses were usually connected with territory and government. A peace agreement might materialise and even be observed by Russia for a while. “The best scenario”, so the thinking went, would be for the Ukrainians to agree to give away whatever the Russian army has occupied by now, including the Crimea, or the whole territory of the Donbass, even the unoccupied parts, plus, of course, to guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO and perhaps even not the EU. The obvious, though silently omitted consequence of this “best scenario” is that Ukraine would lose its right to define its fate and thus its sovereignty and security.
But Putin is not fighting for territory. Why would he need all these ruined cities and villages? Russia could, of course, restore some useful mines and factories, and use Ukrainian Black Sea ports, but this is not what the whole war was about. From the outset the Russian president declared that the war was not against Ukraine, but against the West, particularly the USA and NATO. Remember the ultimatum Putin sent to the USA and NATO in December 2021, demanding that NATO withdraw from the territory of its East European members? The West meekly tried to allay Russia’s purported security concerns by returning to the discussions about NATO’s strategic weapons in Europe. The war on Ukraine was Putin’s reply.
Putin knew that in effect he was demanding NATO’s self–dissolution. He knew that if the USA and/or NATO showed even the slightest inclination to accommodate his demands, NATO would be dead, and the USA would have completely lost face and international prestige. And this was and still is exactly his goal in this war is. Russia’s security concerns in view of NATO’s expansion, the official reason for the war, has always been an excuse. The Soviet Union lived peacefully with a neighbouring NATO–member, Turkey, for four decades, from 1952 until the collapse of the USSR. Even now, Russia is on the best terms with it. And, despite its objections, Russia did not declare war on any of the East European countries when they joined NATO in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Poland, the Baltic states, and other East European states had all experienced life under Soviet rule and eagerly sought NATO membership to guarantee that this would never happen again. They rely on NATO’s collective defence for their sovereignty and their very existence. The slightest wobble over this commitment would have been particularly damaging for America after its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. But if NATO does not stand its ground the whole global order, based on the institutions created by the West at the end of the Second World War, would be weakened beyond reconstruction.
What does Russia want to see instead of the present global order? Putin’s assumption has always been that East European countries had no right to join NATO, and NATO had no right to admit them, even if they pleaded to join. In other words, he wanted to revive the realities of the Cold War with firmly defined spheres of influence and dependence, long after the Cold War was declared to be dead, and while Russia, seemingly, was happily cooperating with the West. The meaning of “victory” for Putin is that he would take revenge upon the West for its victory in the Cold War by destroying its global order and returning Russia to its role as the main ideological opponent of the West. Only Putin will decide when the moment of this victory has come.
But even if Putin’s main goal is the re-making of the global order, and the war in Ukraine is only the means for achieving that, this does not mean that Putin will return the Ukrainian territory that Russia already controls. That will not happen. Russia will always go for more when it feels that it is strong enough to do so.
Many South Africans see the war in Ukraine in this same global perspective. The majority – the ANC, the EFF, the MKP, the SACP, and many of Putin’s admirers elsewhere – support Russia’s efforts to destroy the present global order, though they have their own reasons for this. The ANC insists that it is non-aligned in this war, though, it says, it is not neutral. By which it means that it does not stand aside, but rather stands for peace. However, the recent spat between the presidency and the DA Minister for Home Affairs was revealing. ANC political preferences were made blatantly clear when the minor issue of granting visa-free entry to Ukrainian diplomatic staff produced an avalanche of denunciations on social media and the suspension of his signature by the president. Meanwhile, not only Russian diplomatic staff but all Russian citizens enjoy visa-free entry to South Africa and can stay here for 90-days visa-free. For Russian passport holders this is one of the most generous arrangements of any country in the world – and long may it last, for many Russian opponents of the war in Ukraine find a safe haven here, at least for a while. But this is clear evidence of how very far from being non-aligned, or non-partisan South Africa really is.
The ANC and its splinter parties, the EFF and MKP, faithfully support Russia not only out of sentimental gratitude to the USSR for its assistance in the struggle against apartheid. Far from it. Ukraine was, after all, an important part of the USSR, and it was in Ukraine that some of those who now proclaim their hatred for Ukraine, studied. The ANC is certain that by supporting Russia and its allies it is acting in its own future strategic interests. For several decades the ANC was fighting not only against apartheid but, it was convinced, also against Western imperialism. Not only the ANC, but all the “progressives” of the time were convinced that the fall of apartheid would bring the end to capitalism in South Africa and significantly speed up the collapse of the main enemy, Western imperialism.
The collapse of the USSR was an enormous tragedy for the ANC. Not only did it lose its main, most faithful, and most valued supporter. The flagship of progressive humanity’s steady movement towards a bright, prosperous, and equitable future – for this was how they saw it – was gone. Their entire dream was gone. The ANC came of age in the era of the Cold War, when the borders between good and evil, friend and enemy, the painful past and a bright future were clearly defined. The collapse of the USSR meant that the ANC was ideologically lost. This was not what was supposed to happen. There was no substitute for the clear and confident direction of the Soviet dream. Even China was no substitute then: it was on good terms with the West and seemed to have turned in a market-friendly direction.
Putin’s agenda of restoring Russia to its Soviet glory, avenging the USSR’s defeat in the Cold War, and of vanquishing the Western-led global order, suited the ANC to the hilt. The lost leader has returned and is now more decisive in its struggle against Western imperialism than ever, supported by a new cohort of powerful allies, and still lending the ANC a helping hand. Progressive humanity is again steadily moving towards a bright, prosperous, and equitable world order. Previously, this vision was defined in socialist or national–democratic terms (as the ANC prefers to call it). Now the vision is of a multi-polar world. But the dream is back.
Members of the ANC, EFF and MKP call themselves Marxists. However, none of them takes the trouble to analyse the social and political nature of the present-day world, starting with the countries they now regard as friends. Their predecessors in the 1950s and 1960s endlessly discussed the nature of South African society and tried to define the policy of their organisation on the basis of their conclusions. There are no attempts to do this now. The leaders’ choices are often defined by an almost reflex reaction to such words as “imperialism”, “struggle”, “colonialism”, “decoloniality”. It does not occur to them that these terms can be skilfully used to manipulate them into decisions and policies which could lead them very far away from their dream.
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