Joshua Yaffa writes:

Volodymyr Zelensky’s situation room, where the Ukrainian President monitors developments in his country’s war with Russia, is a windowless chamber, largely taken up by a rectangular conference table and ringed by blackened screens, deep inside the Presidential Administration Building, in central Kyiv. On a recent afternoon, as I sat inside, waiting for Zelensky, I heard his voice—a syrupy baritone, speckled with gravel—before he entered, dressed in his signature military-adjacent style: black T-shirt, olive-drab pants, brown boots. He was in the midst of preparations for a trip to the U.S., where he is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly and, crucially, meet with Joe Biden at the White House, to present what Zelensky has taken to calling Ukraine’s “victory plan.”

Zelensky is saving the details for his meeting with Biden, but he has said that the plan contains a number of elements related to Ukraine’s long-term security and geopolitical position, which presumably includes joining NATO on an accelerated schedule, and the provision of Western military aid with fewer restrictions. (In the run-up to the trip, Zelensky has been lobbying his allies in the West to allow Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia with long-range missiles supplied by the U.S. and other Western countries.) Ukraine’s incursion last month into Kursk, a border region in western Russia—where Ukrainian forces currently occupy around four hundred square miles of Russian territory—is also part of this plan, according to Zelensky, in that it provides Kyiv with leverage against the Kremlin, while also demonstrating that its military is capable of going on the offensive.

Zelensky still presents as the person we have come to know from television screens and social media: an impassioned communicator, confident and unrelenting to the point of stubbornness, an entertainer turned statesman who has weaponized the force of his personality in a thoroughly modern form of warfare. But it is also abundantly clear that the war, now in its third year, cannot be won on Zelensky’s talents alone. A long-awaited Ukrainian counter-offensive fizzled out without much result last year. Russian forces have since steadily increased their foothold in the Donbas, in Ukraine’s east—a grinding campaign in which Russia suffers enormous losses yet manages to march forward, inch by bloody inch. The city of Pokrovsk, a logistics and transport hub in the Donbas, is Russia’s latest target. It is being systematically destroyed by artillery shelling and “glide bombs”—Soviet-era munitions, retrofitted with wings and G.P.S. navigation.

Zelensky has pleaded for more Western military aid, which would certainly help but would not solve Ukraine’s other problems: an inability to sufficiently mobilize and train new soldiers, and ongoing struggles to maintain effective communication and coördination on the front. Meanwhile, across the country, a lack of air defenses has allowed Russia to strike power plants and other energy infrastructure; a recent U.N. report predicted that, come winter, power outages may last up to eighteen hours a day. Polls show increasing levels of fatigue for the war in Ukrainian society, an uptick in those willing to consider peace without a total victory, and an erosion in public trust in Zelensky himself.

Zelensky speaks with the urgency of a leader who knows that he may be facing his last best chance for substantial foreign assistance. Biden is nearing the end of his Presidency, and may be wary of dramatically increasing U.S. involvement, lest he create political headwinds for Kamala Harris in the weeks before November’s election. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has been vague on his policy toward Ukraine. During this month’s debate with Harris, he conspicuously declined to speak of a Ukrainian victory, saying only “I want the war to stop.” In the U.S., Zelensky will discuss his victory plan not only with Biden but also with Harris and Trump. He is clearly aware that the results of the U.S. election hold potentially decisive implications for his country, but he maintains the pose of a man who believes he can still bend history in his favor. “The most important thing now is determination,” Zelensky said in a Presidential address in the days before we met.

During our interview in the situation room, which has been edited for length and clarity, Zelensky skipped between history and political philosophy, military strategy and the mechanisms of international diplomacy. He is a discursive speaker, sometimes hard to pin down, but unfailingly focussed on one overarching message: Ukraine is fighting a war not only with Western backing but on behalf of the West. Ukraine’s sacrifices, Zelensky argues, have kept the U.S. and European nations from having to make more personally painful ones. The argument is clear, even if the response is sometimes disappointing. “If he doesn’t want to support it, I cannot force him,” Zelensky told me, of his upcoming meeting at the White House to discuss his victory plan with Biden. “I can only keep on explaining.” [Continue reading…]