DUBROVNIK, Croatia (AP) — Ukraine's president on Wednesday said he intends to present his “victory plan” to Western leaders this week, but a weekend meeting to discuss it has been postponed as U.S. President Joe Biden said he had to stay home to respond to Hurricane Milton’ s landfall in Florida.
Speaking at a summit in Croatia with leaders of southeastern European states, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he hopes his meeting with Biden at the U.S. Ramstein Air Base in Germany, originally scheduled for Saturday, will be rescheduled soon. That meeting was meant to include about 20 Western leaders and defense ministers.
“We will present our victory plan in detail there, the same as we presented it in the White House,” Zelenskyy said. He added that he now planned to meet with the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany this week to present the plan.
Zelenskyy said the plan is about strengthening Ukraine “both geopolitically and on the battlefield” before any kind of dialogue with Russia.
“Weakness of any of our allies will inspire (Russian President Vladimir) Putin," he said. "That’s why we’re asking them to strengthen us, in terms of security guarantees, in terms of weapons, in terms of our future after this war. In my view, he (Putin) only understands force.”
The specifics of Zelenskyy’s blueprint have been kept quiet but contours of the plan have emerged, including the need for fast action on decisions Western allies have been mulling since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.
Kyiv is still awaiting word from Western partners on its repeated requests to use the long-range weapons they provide to hit targets on Russian soil.
Some Balkan states have been providing Ukraine with short-range weapons. At a previous summit with southeast European countries in February, Zelenskyy pleaded for more to repel Russian advances.
On Wednesday, Zelenskyy signed an agreement with Croatia on further cooperation, particularly regarding humanitarian aid, demining and war crimes prosecution experience that Croatia has from its own 1991-95 war.
Besides Croatia, the summit was being attended by premiers, presidents or foreign ministers from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey.
Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic's government is the only one in Europe that has not imposed sanctions on Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, although Vucic has repeatedly said that Serbia respects Ukraine’s “territorial integrity.”
Summit participants passed a declaration condemning Russia's aggression against Ukraine and supporting Zelenskyy's peace efforts, Ukraine's membership in NATO and its reconstruction after the war.
“There can be no free, peaceful and prosperous Europe without a free, peaceful and prosperous Ukraine,” the joint declaration said.