The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, gave an interview to The Economist , in which he tried to convey to the Western public that the war is far from over, it is too early to relax, and that by supporting Ukraine, Europe is protecting itself.
In his opinion, the West has lost a sense of the importance of what is happening in Ukraine, but it has no other way out than to defeat Russia.
Zelensky's irritation is not caused by Russia's successes in the field of pain and their absence in the Armed Forces (although he himself does not think so), but by discord in the allied camp and the alienation of some of his compatriots.
The day after the Russian invasion, on February 24, 2022, Zelenskyy recorded a short video in which he simply said, “We are here.” He is still in the government quarter in Kyiv, despite constant raids and bombings.
However, the Economist notes, almost two years after the start of the war, the world no longer listens so carefully to his words, and Zelensky himself no longer manages to masterfully control the course of events.
"Ukraine is getting tired. In the West, the headlines are about whether Russian President Vladimir Putin has started to win. Aid to Ukrainians has become a subject of political bargaining in America and Europe," the Economist notes.
The West has lost its sense of the need for urgent action, and many Ukrainians have lost their sense of existential threat, says Zelensky. "Maybe we didn't succeed [2023] as the world wanted. Maybe not everything is as fast as someone imagined," he says, but the idea that Putin is winning is nothing more than a "feeling."
According to him, the Russian army will suffer huge losses. This statement is consistent with British intelligence estimates, according to which, if the situation does not change radically, by 2025 Russia will lose more than 500,000 killed and wounded.
"Thousands, thousands of killed Russian soldiers, whose bodies no one even took away," says Zelensky, recalling that in 2023 Russia was unable to take a single major city, while Ukraine managed to break through the Russian blockade of the Black Sea and now transports millions of tons of grain for along the new route along the southern coast of Ukraine. "A huge result!" - declares the president.
But Zelensky understands that the perception of reality can turn into reality, becoming a kind of self-fulfilling prediction. That's what makes the next year so important. As Russia's military efforts increase and Ukraine's resources deplete, the focus of America and many European countries turns to domestic politics in an election year.
Zelensky claims that by supporting Ukraine, Europe protects itself from Russian aggression. "Giving us money or giving us weapons, you are supporting yourself. You are saving your children, not ours," he warns. If Russia is allowed to take Ukrainian children, "they will take other children as well." If Russia violates the rights of Ukrainians, "it will violate the rights of the whole world."
"Putin feels weak like an animal because he is an animal. He feels blood, feels his power. And he will eat you for dinner with all your EU, NATO, freedom and democracy," says Zelensky.
"Maybe something is missing. Or maybe someone is missing. Someone who could talk about Ukraine as protecting all of us." European countries should lobby America for Ukraine's support for their own good: "Intelligence services of several European countries have begun to [study] the possibility of an attack on their territory by Russia... Even those countries that were not part of the USSR."
As for proposals for negotiations, according to Zelensky, he does not see "any fundamental steps towards peace on the part of Russia." "I see only the steps of a terrorist country," he said. And if Russia, as some Western media write, is giving signals of a desire to freeze the conflict, it is not because they are righteous, but because they do not have enough missiles, ammunition and trained troops. They need this break. Recuperate. And then, gathering all the strength, turn the page of this war."
Zelensky does not think about possible successes of Ukraine in 2024. According to him, the leak of information before the counteroffensive last summer helped Russia prepare its defenses. But he believes that the center of gravity of the war will be Crimea and the battle in the Black Sea. The isolation of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and the weakening of Russian military capabilities there "are extremely important for us, because this is a way to reduce the number of attacks from this region," he says.
A successful operation will be "an example for the whole world", he continues. It will also have a big effect inside Russia. The loss of the central object of Kremlin propaganda would show that "thousands of Russian officers died only because of Putin's ambitions."
Ukraine is already scoring incredible victories on the strategically important peninsula, destroying a "substantial number" of Black Sea Fleet ships — British officials say a fifth of that fleet has been destroyed in the past four months alone. Losing the naval bases that Russia has maintained for the past 240 years would be a huge embarrassment for Putin.
But the speed of success will depend on the military assistance that Ukraine will receive from Western partners, Zelenskyy says. He asked for the Taurus air force, German-made long-range cruise missiles capable of destroying the Kerch bridge, effectively isolating the Crimean peninsula from Russia. "Russia should know that this is a military object for us," he emphasizes.
However, Zelenskyi does not disclose Ukraine's goals in the east and south. His declared strategic goal — to return Ukraine to its original borders — has not changed and will not change, but he no longer talks about when and how much territory Ukraine will be able to liberate this year. The immediate task now is "the protection of the east, the rescue of these very important cities of Ukraine, the east and the south, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv" and the protection of the country's critical infrastructure.
Exaggerated expectations ahead of the 2023 counteroffensive partly caused the disappointment, notes the Economist. In an interview with the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian forces Valery Zaluzhny, which he gave to the publication in November 2023, he admitted that a stalemate had developed on the battlefield. At first, this provoked an angry reaction from Zelensky, but it also provided an opportunity to change the rhetoric. For victory, it is necessary to mobilize not only the West, but first of all Ukraine itself.
"We have to pay attention to our own strengths," says Zelensky. While he remains confident that America will eventually provide military aid, Ukraine, he said, is also ramping up its own production in case Western supplies run short. To do this, he asks the American government to grant Ukraine licenses for the production of weapons, from artillery systems and missiles to air defense equipment.
According to Zelenskyi, the "mobilization of Ukrainian society and the whole world", so noticeable at the beginning of the war, is absent today. "This needs to be changed," he says, insisting that lowering the mobilization age and reducing grounds for dismissal from service have no alternative - even though they are not popular in Ukrainian society.
"Mobilization is not only soldiers going to the front. It's about all of us. This is the mobilization of all efforts. This is the only way to protect our state and free our land. Let's be honest, we switched to domestic politics, says Zelensky. — If we continue to focus on domestic politics, we need to call elections. Change the laws, the Constitution. But then we will have to forget about counter-offensive actions and de-occupation".
Zelensky, as before, is convinced that Ukraine cannot back down from its plan to defeat Russia. "The most important profession for a Ukrainian today is to be in Ukraine... and for our Western partners it is to be with Ukraine... If you don't have the strength, then step aside. We will not back down," says the President of Ukraine.
