Interpreting Zelensky’s Shifting Goalposts For Victory

He finally accepts the impossibility of restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders.

Zelensky recently told ABC News that “Victory, to my mind, Putin's goal is to occupy Ukraine, this is to destroy us, occupy, and did he occupy it?...He didn't occupy us, we win, and I think so, because we have our country.” This is a far cry from the mantra that he’s chanted almost daily for the past 3,5 years since the special operation began about restoring his country’s pre-2014 borders. Quite clearly, he’s hinting that he’ll accept an end to the conflict that doesn’t achieve that aim, thus going with the political flow.

About that, while Trump might escalate US involvement for the purpose of coercing Putin into freezing the conflict without obtaining any of his stated goals therein, he doesn’t have any illusions about Ukraine restoring its pre-2014 borders. The same goes for if he tries to make a direct NATO intervention there, whether before or after hostilities cease and regardless of whether it precedes a no-fly zone, a fait accompli. Zelensky is aware of this and doesn’t want to risk Trump’s wrath by demanding the impossible.

Accordingly, he’s now begun the task of correcting domestic and Western perceptions of victory, ergo why he’s now shifting the goalposts by claiming that this has been achieved just by ending the conflict without Russia occupying all of Ukraine. The problem is that Russia never intended to occupy all of Ukraine. This is proven by it never even trying to take Odessa, not to mention making no moves whatsoever on Western Ukraine, with Kiev’s environs being the furthest west that Russia ever went.

To be sure, some of its supporters have fantasized that Russia’s goal is to occupy all of Ukraine up to the Polish border, but this has always been wishful thinking and never a reflection of Russia’s stated goals or even its implied ones as proven by the course of military operations. By spinning this baseless speculation as strategic fact, which inadvertently highlights the curious narrative convergence between some of Russia’s and Ukraine’s supporters, Zelensky hopes to settle for less without “losing face”.

He's motivated not only by concerns about his legacy, but also by fear of an ultra-nationalist (fascist) revolt from segments of civil society and the armed forces in the event that he accepts indefinite Russian control over Ukrainian-claimed territories as part of a peace deal. The irony is that Ukraine would have retained the parts of Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions presently under Russian control had Zelensky accepted the terms of spring 2022’s draft peace treaty that the UK and Poland conspired to sabotage.

The precedent established by the epic failure of summer 2023’s counteroffensive, which was prepared for over a year and followed the influx of tens of billions of dollars of military equipment into Ukraine that the West no longer has to spare, suggests that Zelensky won’t claw anything back no matter what . The conflict will thus end with Russia at the very least keeping the lands that it won in those two regions, if not expanding its gains (whether there and/or elsewhere) depending on how everything soon evolves.

Circling back to Zelensky shifting the goalposts for victory, the significance is therefore that he’s truly willing to freeze the conflict along the frontlines at minimum, with the possibility existing that he might even agree to withdraw from the rest of Donbass if Trump orders him to as part of a deal with Putin. That can’t be taken for granted, however, since he thus far hasn’t pressured him on anything so far. In any case, the military-political dynamics continue to favor Russia, and Zelensky has finally accepted this.