US elections, Orbán, Fico: Zelenskyy's efforts to maintain the support of Ukraine's partners
Ukraine is entering a new phase of the war – and a new chapter in its relationships with its partners. This becomes obvious as soon as you turn on the US news.
Even Volodymyr Zelenskyy – TIME’s 2022 Person of the Year – appeared to find it increasingly difficult to maintain his public presence and visibility during his most recent visit to Washington, DC.
Ukrainska Pravda sources in the president’s diplomatic team, however, seem certain that Zelenskyy is still the focus of international attention: "We have Zelenskyy; there will be no other president until the war is over. As a country, we have to trust in him. Fortunately, the majority of Americans still consider Zelenskyy a celebrity. Even if we’re less visible on screens in light of other issues, such as the war in Israel."
The war in Ukraine continues to be one of the most important issues in the West, but it’s only one issue among many. The shift of focus to the Middle East following the latest escalation in Israel and Gaza bears this out.
"The honeymoon period of our relationship [with our international partners] is over. We have to be more attentive to our partners’ recommendations and take them into account if we want to keep receiving aid," admits an influential member of Zelenskyy’s team involved in international diplomacy.
The US and the European Union do indeed have a lot of "recommendations" for Ukraine: the official list of reforms that Ukraine needs to implement, as set out by its partners, fills five A4 pages.
The world is entering election season, and Ukraine is expected to come up with a steady supply of victories, whether in terms of battlefield advances or successful implementation of reforms. In the absence of such victories, it will be very, very difficult for Ukraine to maintain its partners’ support – and thus bring its victory over Russia closer.
However eloquent and moving Zelenskyy’s speeches may be, Ukraine’s partners no longer have time to listen.
Ukraine and elections around the world
All the countries in the coalition supporting Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression are democracies, and this is a major strength.
But this strength is also the source of a number of challenges – challenges absent from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s relations with his autocratic partners. The first such challenge is that democratic leaders need to win real elections and be responsive to public opinion.
Ukraine, now in the second year of its resistance to Russia’s aggression, has, like it or not, become the subject of heated political debate in European and US elections.
Incumbent governments and politicians in many countries have explicitly chosen to stand with Ukraine, and military aid for Ukraine has drawn sharp criticism from opposition politicians as election primaries and campaigns gain momentum.
At times some truly absurd statements have been made by opposition politicians, such as Robert Fico, Slovakia’s new prime minister, who said: "People in Slovakia have bigger issues than Ukraine."
Some US Congress members and US presidential election candidates employ similar rhetoric.
Fortunately for Ukraine, only the ultra right-wing, pro-Trump minority in the Republican party publicly endorses this view – for now.
It was this minority group, however, that triggered a government crisis in the US House of Representatives several weeks ago, ousting speaker Kevin McCarthy by accusing him of colluding with the Democrats and making a "secret deal" to help Ukraine. And it was also this minority that secured the appointment of Trump ally Mike Johnson as the new House speaker.
"A bipartisan majority of members of Congress still supports us. But the loud minority opposing us didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s just that while [Nancy] Pelosi [McCarthy’s predecessor, a Democrat - ed.] was the speaker, she put Ukraine-related issues to a vote, and there were enough votes [supporting them]. There are still those votes now, but now there’s no one to put those issues to a vote. That’s why this minority is so prominent. So we’ve ended up hostage to the US’s internal political processes," a diplomatic source knowledgeable about the situation in the US told Ukrainska Pravda.
While one shouldn’t ignore the importance of Ukraine’s role in the US’s agenda, it shouldn’t be overestimated either.
For millions of US citizens, and for the US media, issues such as abortion bans, or the lack of school buses as the school year begins, are much more prominent than "faraway wars".
Still, among the conservative elites – for whom Elon Musk increasingly appears to be the flagbearer – there is a growing sense of apocalyptic dread in the face of a possible escalation in Ukraine, which they believe could bring the world to the brink of a nuclear war.
A closer look at Musk’s calls for Ukraine to surrender part of its territory to Putin in order to end the war reveals a pragmatic, economic fear that a weaker Russia will make it easier for China to access and exploit its resources.
The approach of the US presidential elections is a catalyst for these debates.
Meanwhile, recent elections in Poland and Slovakia have shown that dragging Ukraine into domestic politics and holding the fate of a bleeding country in suspense is something that doesn’t just happen far away across the ocean – it can happen among our close European neighbours too.
For Ukraine, getting involved in these domestic squabbles means losing its partners’ support. It’s easy to yield to emotions, but it’s also often the worst course of action.
Ukraine can’t afford that. For every day of delay in receiving military aid from its partners, Ukraine pays – not with media sympathy and approval ratings, but with its land and with people’s lives. No statements, however outrageous, by the likes of Slovakia’s Fico, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or US presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy should prevent Ukraine from effectively working with its partners.
Aid depends on success
At the beginning of this year, the President’s Office began to admit that unconditional support from the West could not last forever and that we might face significant problems obtaining financial and military assistance in the future.
"Sometime in the winter, the president told his inner circle that it would get harder over time and that we should look for new reasoning to convince our partners in the future," a source close to the President’s Office said off the record.
But despite Zelenskyy's predictions, the president's team was still unprepared for overseas politics to drop their "leader of the free world" charm and try to drag Ukraine into their domestic strife so quickly.
Now the President’s Office is trying to understand and accept the new reality. At least the president himself is aware, according to those around him, that there may be problems with the pace of aid, and that emotionally blackmailing our partners will not solve those problems at this point.
Only positive news from the front and from Ukraine generally can give our partners reasons why they should continue providing support.
"We have to demonstrate some success. Without successes on the battlefield, support may decrease. Every aspect affects another aspect. So we cannot stop, we have to keep moving forward. We need a slow, creeping victory." That’s how people from Zelenskyy’s inner circle paraphrase the president's words.
"At the meeting with Biden, Blinken told our people: 'When you have successes on the battlefield and results in reforms, you make our work much easier!'," sources add.
Both the components in this sentence are important: the battlefield and the reforms.
The meeting with Biden saw agreement reached on the first ATACMS, but according to Ukrainska Pravda’s information, the President’s Office has seriously considered trying to involve the EU more in regard to military assistance and become less dependent on America’s internal political wranglings.
Not because there are any value differences with the United States, but to avoid being in a situation where someone else gets to determine what Ukraine considers victory. And it must be admitted that Kyiv and its other allies still do not share a common vision on this key issue.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly reiterated his position: a return to 1991 borders, punishment for war criminals, and the rest of the points of the Peace Formula.
But the list of Ukraine’s friends includes a significant number of countries that take substantially different positions.
"There are many countries among our partners who say: ‘You’ve already won! You stopped Putin from destroying Ukraine and seizing Kyiv – this is your victory. So maybe it's time to seek out some kind of platform for negotiations?’" sources in the president's inner circle told Ukrainska Pravda.
Zelenskyy's team believes that the only way Ukraine can convey to "peacemakers" like this that its struggle is not over is to give its partners a small dose of victory every day.
As Zelenskyy himself put it: "We need a result for Ukraine every day.
Withstanding Russian assaults, killing occupiers, moving forward, even if it’s only a kilometre, even 500 metres, but moving forward every day to improve Ukraine's position, to put pressure on the occupiers. This gives the state strength. It motivates the whole world to help us."
That's why it’s so crucial to have news about Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems being hit by new missiles provided by our partners; strikes by unidentified drones on the Russian city of Sochi over 1,000 km away from Ukraine; photos of burned-out convoys of Russian military equipment near Avdiivka; or the strikes by unique surface drones that forced the Russian fleet to leave Crimea.
A key point about most of these news stories is that Ukraine is coping with these huge challenges with the help of weapons it has developed itself.
Obviously, domestic production will not completely cover the needs of the Armed Forces, as they are vast even for NATO’s defence industry. But Ukrainian successes do allow Ukraine to ask its partners for newer high-tech weapons.
"When we have our own long-range missiles, it will be much easier to talk to our partners about ATACMS. They won’t be afraid to supply them if we have developed our own," one government official told Ukrainska Pravda.
Involving Western arms manufacturers in joint projects in Ukraine is another of the key tasks that the government is currently pursuing. Ukraine has already agreed on the first steps of such cooperation with the United States.
"We turn up, and we don’t make demands, we say: we have this project on, say, air defence, and here we can do this, this and this, but we don’t have this component, and you do. And when we try to talk to them like this, they begin to see our projects as benefiting them, and to see us as partners, not beggars. And believe me, there is nothing more important than that," says one of the members of Zelenskyy's security sector team.
However, since our allies are a club of democracies, developing the army is not going to be enough if we are to grow closer to them. Entry to this club lies through reforms, combating corruption, democratisation and so on.
The exact list of the points that will allow Ukraine to be part of the West not only in words, but also to integrate into associations like the EU, is widely known and has even been publicly announced.
This list of reforms is just as important as military victories. There is no mention of giving related firms millions of hryvnias in funding to make TV series, or of signing over shares in businesses to covert financial backers.
If the elite’s uncontrolled appetites remain an element of governance, Ukraine may win the war, but it will miss a historic opportunity.
President Zelenskyy is in for a new transformation. As Ukraine moves into a prolonged war, the entire government and its communications will need to change.
Just as Zelenskyy, the president of peace who did not want to fight, was replaced on 24 February 2022 by a Zelenskyy who boldly accepted the battle, so must a new incarnation of the president emerge now – a leader of cold calculation and the long game.
Ukraine will not be able to withstand this new phase of a prolonged war of attrition unless, on the one hand, it engages in constructive, pragmatic dialogue with its partners and, on the other hand, it does its "homework" diligently.
Either Ukraine will now do all it can to seize this opportunity to turn its friends into real partners, or it risks losing them altogether.
Roman Romaniuk and Roman Kravets, Ukrainska Pravda
Translation: Olya Loza and Myroslava Zavadska
Editing: Teresa Pearce