Politician Yulia Tymoshenko. Photo: RT.
“Yes, today we are all for victory, for Ukraine, for territorial integrity,” former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said in a video posted on social networks. “But with what is happening today, it will be very difficult for Ukraine to wage protracted wars.”
“So I ask the president: Give the country a plan B so we can win,” she said.
Tymoshenko did not say what her vision for an alternative policy would look like. She described the current situation as “difficult and quite tragic” due to reduced military aid from the West, at just “enough to not lose out”.
Tymoshenko became Ukraine’s first female prime minister in 2005, following the so-called “Orange Revolution”, and led the government again in 2007-2010. She was controversially jailed by former President Viktor Yanukovich. Mr. Yanukovich was overthrown in the Maidan coup in 2014.
Dubbed the ‘gas princess’, she currently heads the opposition Fatherland party (Batkivshchyna), which has 24 seats in the Verkhovna Rada.
The former Prime Minister also mentioned Zelensky’s proposal to mobilize up to 500,000 additional troops, which means expanding mobilization to the very young, the elderly as well as the disabled.
“It doesn’t solve the problem, it’s ineffective and unconstitutional,” Tymoshenko said, noting that her party would vote against it. Instead of expanding the military draft to 25-year-olds, she said, Kiev should send police to the front.
She argued: “Retaining (…) hundreds of thousands of people in the security forces who know how to fight but do not fight is a wrong view.”
According to Zelensky’s “peace platform” articulated last November, Ukraine’s goal is to reclaim the 1991 borders and force Russia to surrender unconditionally and join the EU and NATO. Some of his advisers also speculated that Russia would need to be divided.
Moscow has dismissed Zelensky’s “platform” as nonsense, noting that for negotiations with Ukraine to begin, Kiev needs to recognize Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, Kherson – and of course, Crimea – as territories. Russian territory.
In March 2014, when Crimea voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia in response to the US-backed Maidan coup, Tymoshenko was captured on tape calling on Ukrainians to “take our guns and kill Go, kill those damn Russians”.
She ran for president in 2019 against then-president Pyotr Poroshenko, but came third behind Zelensky – an actor with no political experience – who entered the race on promises of peace.
Meanwhile, the US newspaper Politico quoted a number of anonymous sources as saying that the US and the EU had abandoned Ukraine’s goal of “comprehensive victory” over Russia to switch to a negotiated solution that could cede some territory for Moscow.
Publicly, both the White House and the Pentagon have insisted there has been no official change in policy.
But according to Politico’s sources, US and European officials are currently “discussing redeployment” of Ukrainian troops from the “almost failed” counterattack and into a defensive position.
US President Joe Biden once promised to support Ukraine “as long as necessary”, but now says instead “as long as we can”. With additional aid funding stuck in Congress, the US government is pushing for a “rapid revival” of Ukraine’s military industry.
An anonymous White House spokesman told Politico that negotiations have always been America’s ultimate goal in Ukraine and that all aid to Kiev is aimed at giving the country “the strongest possible hand when that happens”.
According to Politico, Mr. Biden wants a ceasefire in both Ukraine and the Middle East, because his endorsement of Israel’s attack in Gaza is “costing him the support” of progressive Democrats and he wanted to “avoid bad news in an election year”.
Politico noted that Mr. Biden “seems unable to gain an advantage” over Russia after nearly two years of declaring full support for President Zelensky’s goal of complete victory.
