BRUSSELS — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will search help from European Union leaders on Thursday for what he’s calling his “ victory plan ” to finish the devastating warfare with Russia.
Zelenskyy will tackle EU leaders at their summit in Brussels earlier than shuttling throughout city to fulfill with NATO protection ministers. The EU is a key supporter of Ukraine — a candidate member of the 27-nation bloc — because it fights Russia’s invasion that started greater than 2 1/2 years in the past.
Zelenskyy outlined the five-point plan to Ukraine’s parliament on Wednesday with out disclosing confidential parts which have been introduced in non-public to key allies, together with the US.
Response was muted at NATO, the place Secretary-Normal Mark Rutte stated solely that he and the allies “take word” of it. He didn’t talk about when Ukraine would possibly be part of the world’s greatest army alliance, past insisting that it might ultimately grow to be a member.
“The plan has many facets and plenty of political and army points we actually must hammer out with the Ukrainians to grasp what’s behind it, to see what we are able to do, what we can not do,” Rutte stated at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
Main factors of the plan embody an invite for Ukraine to affix NATO and permission to make use of Western-supplied longer-range missiles to strike army targets deep inside Russia — steps which have been met with reluctance by Kyiv’s allies to date.
A draft copy of EU summit conclusions — a textual content that can doubtless be tweaked earlier than publication on the finish of Thursday’s assembly — reaffirms the bloc’s “unwavering dedication to offering continued political, monetary, financial, humanitarian, army and diplomatic help to Ukraine and its individuals for so long as it takes and as intensely as wanted. Russia should not prevail.”
Thursday’s talks in Brussels come as Ukrainian troops are struggling to carry off better-equipped Russian forces, particularly within the jap Donetsk area the place they’re step by step being pushed again. Kyiv is surviving with Western assist, however Ukraine says it’s coming too slowly.
At their summit in Washington in July, the 32 NATO members declared Ukraine on an “irreversible” path to membership.
However for now, NATO is in a holding sample. Its greatest and strongest member, the US, is dealing with a presidential election. European allies count on little motion on Ukraine till a brand new president takes workplace in January.
Past that, the US and European heavyweight Germany stay deeply involved about being dragged right into a wider warfare with nuclear-armed Russia, and so they lead a gaggle of nations that oppose permitting Ukraine to affix NATO till the battle ends.
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Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.
