Volodymyr Zelensky does not want to think about a long war, much less talk about that possibility to Ukrainians, many of whom still dream of a quick victory. However, he prepares just for that. “I have to be prepared, my team has to be prepared for a long war, and emotionally I am prepared,” says the president of Ukraine in an interview with The Economist. Speaking at the YES conference, an international meeting held in Kyiv, he is calm, serene and pessimistic. A year ago, on the same stage, the atmosphere was electric and euphoric; The news of the success of the Ukrainian forces in expelling Russia from the Kharkiv region echoed from every cell phone in the room.
This year, the atmosphere is very different. After three months of counteroffensive, Ukraine has made only modest progress in the all-important southern axis of the Zaporozhye region, where it is trying to cut the “land bridge” established by Vladimir Putin between Russia and Crimea. The question of how long it will take or whether it will be achieved weighs on the minds of Western leaders. His speech has not changed, they promise that they will support Ukraine “as long as it takes.” However, Zelensky, a former television actor with a keen sense of public sentiment, has detected a change in mood among some of his associates. “I have an intuition, reading, hearing and seeing their eyes [when they say] ‘We will always be with you,’” he explains. “What I see is that my interlocutor is not here, he is not with us.”
He separates his hands in a gesture of frustration. Some partners might see Ukraine's recent difficulties on the battlefield as a reason to force it into negotiations with Russia. However, “it is a bad time, since Putin sees the same thing.”
Having failed to quickly seize Ukraine, Putin appears determined to exhaust the country and erode the resolve of partners to continue financing and supplying it with weapons. His goal is to turn Ukraine into a dysfunctional and depopulated state whose refugees cause problems in Europe. Now, Zelensky assures that it is Russia that is fragile. Putin “does not understand that in a long war he will lose. He doesn't care if 60% or 70% [of Russians] support him. No, it is his economy that will lose.” As Ukraine increases attacks inside Russia, Russians will begin to ask uncomfortable questions about their military's inability to protect them, “because our drones will manage to hit them.” The authority of the Russian president was weakened in June with the mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group mercenaries who was later assassinated. Zelensky believes he will weaken even further.
At the same time, the Ukrainian president is well aware of the risks his country would run if the West begins to withdraw economic support. Not only would Ukraine's economy be damaged, but so would the war effort. He expresses it crudely. “If you are not with Ukraine, you are with Russia; and, if you are not with Russia, you are with Ukraine. And, if the partners don't help us, that means they will help Russia win. So clear." With several of his Western allies (including the United States) holding elections next year, Zelensky knows it won't be easy to maintain support; especially, if there is no significant progress on the front.
The Ukrainian president has managed to win over Western public opinion, often going over his politicians. He continues to believe that the best way to “convince governments, [to make them] believe that they are on the right side, is to put pressure on them through the media. “People read, people talk, people form an opinion and press,” he says. It was public opinion that pushed politicians to increase the supply of weapons to Ukraine in the first days of the war. Reducing that aid, he argues, could not only anger Ukrainians but also Western voters. They will begin to wonder what all the effort was for. “People will not forgive [their leaders] if they lose Ukraine.”
If Putin hopes that a victory by Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election will give him victory, he is wrong. Trump will “never” support Vladimir Putin. “That's not what strong Americans do.” He hopes Joe Biden will stay the course if he is re-elected (“you want an Afghanistan, part two?”). And he hopes that the European Union will not only continue to provide aid, but will open negotiations on Ukraine's accession process this year. (That is expected to happen at a summit in December.) “It will boost morale in Ukraine. “It will energize people.”
Maintaining high morale is crucial. That is why, according to Zelensky, progress on the front, even if limited, is essential. “Now we have movement. It is important". After heavy initial losses and hastily adapted tactics, Ukrainian soldiers have finally pierced the first of the three main Russian defensive lines in the Zaporizhia region. Zelensky insists that a breakthrough can still occur: “If we press from the south, they will flee.”
On the secondary front of the counteroffensive, near the eastern city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces are also slowly recovering territory. “During the first days of the full-scale war, they didn't stop pushing and we had to retreat. Every day. They took some cities, hundreds of towns,” he says. Now, Ukrainian forces are advancing slowly. Although soldiers face the Herculean task of converting progress along any of the axes into a strategic advance.
In response to Western complaints about the slowness of the offensive, Zelensky says it reflects the extreme level of danger. The recovery of territory must be balanced with the preservation of as many lives as possible. Soldiers have to reduce risks: conduct reconnaissance, use drones, avoid direct confrontations. Ukraine would have had “thousands” of casualties had it followed the advice to send many more troops, he says. This is not the kind of war where “the leader of a country says the price doesn't matter.” And there is the difference between him and Vladimir Putin. “For him, life is worthless.”
After months of building expectations regarding the counteroffensive, Zelensky is carefully adjusting his message to reality. Victory will not come “tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” he adds. Despite everything, it is not a fanciful dream. Ukraine deserves to win, and the West must support it. The Russian army is losing “a lot of people” and is redeploying its reserves to stop the Ukrainian advance, he explains: “That means they lose.”
He flatly rejects, slamming the idea of a compromise with Vladimir Putin on the table. The war will continue “as long as Russia remains on Ukrainian territory,” he maintains. A negotiated agreement would not be permanent. The Russian president has a habit of creating “frozen conflicts” on Russian borders (in Georgia, for example), not as ends in themselves, but because his goal is to “restore the Soviet Union.” Those who decide to talk to the man from the Kremlin “deceive themselves,” as happened to the Western leaders who signed an agreement in Munich in 1938 with Adolf Hitler and then watched him invade Czechoslovakia. “The mistake is not diplomacy. The mistake is diplomacy with Putin. He only negotiates with himself.”
According to Zelensky, reducing aid to Ukraine would only prolong the war. And it would create risks for the West in its own backyard. There is no way to predict how the millions of Ukrainians refugees in European countries will react to the abandonment of their country. In general, Ukrainians “have behaved well” and are “very grateful” to those who have given them shelter. They will not forget that generosity. Now, it would not be a “good story” for Europe to “leave all those people aside.”
In turn, a long war of attrition would represent a crossroads for Ukraine. The country would lose even more people, both on the front and through emigration. A “fully militarized economy” would be necessary. The government would have to raise that perspective to its citizens, Zelensky says, without specifying how; This new social contract could not be the decision of a single person. After almost 19 months of war, the president claims to be “morally” prepared for change. However, he will only broach the idea with his people if weakness in the eyes of Western allies becomes a “trend.” Has that time come? No, not yet, he says. "Thank God".
