Idea of Victory Plan is to impose strategic defeat on Russia - Estonian expert

According to Ukrinform, this opinion was expressed by security expert Rainer Saks on Estonian television.

“The most important part of this plan is something that is not there yet: Western countries should put strong pressure on Russia in the negotiation process to make it withdraw from the occupied territories. That is the general impression of this plan,” Sachs said.

According to his assessment, it is obvious that Ukraine cannot ask for some unrealistic assistance to liberate the territories in the coming months.

“They [the Ukrainian leadership] want to motivate both Western countries and their citizens to end the fighting, and then increase pressure on Russia to withdraw from the occupied territories,” the Estonian expert said.

Commenting on Zelensky's plan, Saks also emphasized that it had some unexpected aspects. In particular, this plan was a novelty, as no one has presented a comprehensive plan for ending the war so far.

“The plan may not cover all areas of activity necessary to achieve the desired results for Ukraine, it was expected to contain significant requests for Western weapons, additional air defense, etc. However, these aspects are placed in secret programs of the plan and are not visible in its public part,” the expert said.

According to him, the most interesting and newest thing in this plan is that it seems as if Ukraine wants troops of major NATO members to be deployed on its territory after the end of active hostilities. This is to prevent Russia from starting a new war at any time. This will help avoid a scenario in which peace talks turn into a truce, a frozen conflict, and then Russia attacks again.

“It is not described in detail, there are secret annexes in the plan, but it seems that this non-nuclear deterrence strategy has two components: one is the deployment of troops from NATO member states such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy. These are probably not conventional combat units, but some kind of capabilities, such as air defense. This is the impression given by what President Zelensky said in parliament yesterday,” Sachs said.

As reported by Ukrinform, on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky presented the Victory Plan during a speech in the Verkhovna Rada.

Photo: Siim Lõvi / ERR