Zelensky’s ‘Plan B’: Ukraine’s Fight for Survival Against Russia

When recently asked whether he has a Plan B, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “We’re already in Plan B. We’re living and fighting in it.” And that’s because “We’ve never had a Plan A.” That should have been “not to let the full-scale Russian invasion happen, to strengthen Ukraine with military aid and impose preventive sanctions against Russia so that it would have been scared of the mere thought of a full-scale invasion.”

Medieval scholastics would have been proud of Zelensky’s clever splitting of hairs. But the point he’s making is spot on. Had the West—as well as Ukraine and its then optimistically inclined President—been better prepared in 2021, they might have been able to forestall the invasion of 2022 or reduce its scope, intensity, and longevity. Indeed, had there been a genuine Plan A, the war might have been over by now. Zelensky’s Victory Plan, whose details are still unknown, is thus his Plan A.

Semantic subtleties aside, the question remains: what should Ukraine aim for if the West in general and the United States, in particular, lose their currently high interest in Ukraine and either reject his Victory Plan or attach too many strings to it? The question isn’t purely hypothetical. At best, Donald Trump and J. D. Vance are indifferent to Ukraine. The Freedom Party of Austria, the Alternative for Germany, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico are downright hostile. It’s not hard to imagine a bloc of Russophile Western countries willing to support Russia’s genocide and war a few months from now.

What should Ukrainians do if the West’s enthusiasm for them wanes? Keep on fighting is a large part of the answer, especially if Russia’s multiple crises deepen and the Putin regime and the Russian state itself start teetering on the edge of collapse. Under such auspicious conditions, holding out and waiting for the Russian Federation to crack may be Ukraine’s best short-, medium-, and long-term strategy.

Call that Plan C. But what if Russia refuses to collapse, and a stalemate looks like the best Ukraine can hope for? What would Plan D look like?

Some suggest that if things come to a head, Ukraine will have no choice but to negotiate. But negotiations, whether now or in the future, presuppose Putin’s willingness to seek some compromise.

But Putin has no Plan B. For him, it’s either victory, which means destroying Ukraine, or defeat, which is anything short of Ukraine’s annihilation.

Perhaps he’ll eventually change his mind? Fat chance. Putin has backed himself into a corner. By identifying himself so closely with Russia and the war against Ukraine, Putin has no choice but to pursue victory as he defines it. Compromise means self-emasculation, a prospect that Russia’s macho leader cannot countenance, especially if it’s forced upon him by renegade Russians—i.e. Ukrainians—with a flair for neo-Nazism. Having made the war existential, both for Ukraine and himself, Putin has to win to survive.

Put differently, Putin has to be removed, either by an act of God or a conspiracy of his entourage, for peace via negotiations or Kyiv’s Plan D to have a chance. That’s not as farfetched as it may sound. No spring chicken anymore, the Russian Führer could easily follow in his countrymen’s statistical footsteps and, confronted with their average life spans, meet his maker (the one in that exceptionally hot corner of the universe).

Worse, Putin has maneuvered his country into a dead end. Victory, as he defines it, is impossible; continued horrendous losses, steep economic decline, and growing social, political, and ethnic discontent are inevitable if his Russia continues along the path he’s defined.

British historian Timothy Garton Ash has written that a Central Asian leader told him that Putin might be persuaded to negotiate “when his generals tell him he’s losing.” It’s doubtful that the logical force of their arguments would sway Putin. But if several of his generals muster up the courage to tell him he’s losing, then they will, in effect, have prepared the groundwork for a coup. In that case, to tell Putin that he’s losing in Ukraine is equivalent to putting a gun to his head and telling him that he’s lost in Russia.

Organizing a coup is hard, but there’s ample historical evidence, especially in Russian history, of its frequency. Putin came to power as a result of a coup against Boris Yeltsin. Leonis Brezhnev and his comrades dumped Nikita Khrushchev. Joseph Stalin’s minions may have poisoned him. Yevgeny Prigozhin came close to ridding the world of Putin in June 2023. Who’s next we don’t know, but that there will be someone next we do. It’s just a matter of time. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the fate of the world is in the hands of Putin or a handful of Russian generals.

Putin’s successors will likely have a Plan B that could enable Ukraine to adopt its Plan D and thereby serve as the basis for fruitful negotiations. Even if they fully share his fascist and imperialist agenda, Putin’s successors will not have identified themselves with the war and will thus be able to end it without the loss of face that Putin couldn’t endure.

Putin dragged Russia into a war that it couldn’t win. Now it’s up to Russia’s generals to drag Putin out of the Kremlin and onto the ash heap of history.

About the Author: Dr. Alexander Motyl

Dr. Alexander Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, including Pidsumky imperii (2009); Puti imperii (2004); Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (2001); Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities (1999); Dilemmas of Independence: Ukraine after Totalitarianism (1993); and The Turn to the Right: The Ideological Origins and Development of Ukrainian Nationalism, 1919–1929 (1980); the editor of 15 volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (2000) and The Holodomor Reader (2012); and a contributor of dozens of articles to academic and policy journals, newspaper op-ed pages, and magazines. He also has a weekly blog, “Ukraine’s Orange Blues.”