The classified component details attack plans on Russia and a weaponry wish list, according to Mikhail Podoliak
Mikhail Podoliak. © Getty Images / Aleksandr Gusev / SOPA Images / LightRocket
The secret component of the “victory plan” unveiled by Vladimir Zelensky on Wednesday includes Kiev’s targets for long-range attacks on Russian soil, Mikhail Podoliak, a top aide to the Ukrainian leader, has revealed.
The parts of the plan that were not disclosed to the public consist of a list of targets, a plan of action, and a detailing of the weapons needed to carry out such attacks against Russia, Podoliak told RBC Ukraine in an interview on Wednesday.
“There, in the appendices, it is precisely said what kind of weapons should be used to destroy logistics very far from the front line… what targets will be hit and how many weapons are needed for this,” the official stated.
Zelensky revealed the so-called “victory plan” earlier in the day in an address to the country’s parliament. The Ukrainian leader toured Western capitals in recent weeks to show the plan to his backers in private and try to generate support for it.
The public part of the plan largely consists of a number of demands made of Ukraine’s Western supporters. Kiev requested an immediate invitation to join NATO, a lifting of restrictions on the use of Western-supplied long-range weapons for strikes on Russia, as well as the deployment of “a comprehensive non-nuclear strategic deterrence package” on Ukrainian soil.
The plan, particularly its cornerstone NATO accession demand, appears to have elicited a mixed reaction in the West. Washington’s envoy to NATO, Julianne Smith, for instance, said that while the bloc remains committed to Kiev’s “irreversible path of membership,” actual accession was not a “short-term” matter.
Moscow dismissed the plan as a set of “incoherent slogans,” with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemning it as “bloody foam on the lips of a neo-Nazi killer.” She also dismissed the NATO aspirations long-touted by Kiev, suggesting the only place the West actually deems fit for Ukraine in its “security architecture” is “in a coffin and Ukrainian citizens in graves.”