Zelensky’s New Peace Plan Is Another Fantasy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted out his new plan for ending the Ukraine war today. The five points, in order, are: If anyone was hoping for a more realistic plan than Zelensky's 2022 10-point plan, there's not much to go on here. He appears to have relented on getting Russian President Vladimir Putin into the hoosegow in the Hague, but otherwise what Zelensky is asking for almost certainly will not be forthcoming. The place to start in evaluating this plan is with a brutal but unavoidable fact: Ukraine is losing the war at present. The Kursk incursion produced a fleeting moment of euphoria but failed to divert enough Russian troops from Ukrainian territory to ease the conflict there. Russian forces continue to adapt, making slow advances in a grinding war of attrition across the four Ukrainian oblasts it now claims. Given Ukraine's inherent disadvantages in population, economic size, and military power, the longer the war continues, the worse it becomes for Ukraine. And it does not look likely to end any time soon.