By Tom Balmforth
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will seek more support from allies when he addresses the UN and meets Donald Trump this week, but behind the scenes Kyiv is quietly preparing for a new phase of the war in which it relies more on itself.
Kyiv’s hopes of winning tough new U.S. sanctions on Russia are fading, and a new pragmatism in Ukraine makes Zelenskiy’s trip less fraught than some earlier visits to the United States, with lessons learnt from February’s White House bust-up.
Frenetic European diplomacy and a Ukrainian expression of regret after February’s disastrous meeting paved the way for a resumption of crucial U.S. intelligence sharing and weapons supplies authorised by the U.S. president’s predecessor.
Yet intense lobbying has failed to persuade Trump to impose sanctions that would hurt Russia’s war economy sufficiently to bring President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, and Ukrainians are sceptical that the war will soon end.
UKRAINIANS ARE UNCERTAIN ABOUT THE FUTURE
Only 18% of Ukrainians think hostilities can end this year, and a feeling of uncertainty for the future is pervasive in Ukraine, said Anton Grushetskyi, head of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.
Putin has secured some recent diplomatic wins, including getting a red-carpet welcome at a summit with Trump in Alaska, and there are signs that Ukraine has been switching gears for a new stage of the war in which foreign support is diminished.
A Ukrainian think-tank that used to study Russia to find targets for government sanctions now does analytics to help the military select targets for drone strikes, said a senior staff member.
The source said Ukraine not only faced setbacks on sanctions and reduced U.S. assistance, but could also lose some other allied support in Europe.
In a sign how Kyiv is trying to turn the screw on Russia itself, Ukrainian long-range drones have hit ports and refineries, prompting a Russian warning of looming output cuts for its oil producers.
‘SUPER IMPORTANT PLACE TO BE’
Zelenskiy is likely to ask Trump for new U.S. sanctions on Russia on Tuesday, a day before addressing the UN General Assembly.
Kyiv has also been promoting plans for a summit dedicated to Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula, an event that appears designed to push back against discussion of any peace deal involving Crimea being recognised as Russian territory.
Putin says more than 700,000 Russian soldiers are now deployed on the front line in Ukraine, and Russia occupies roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory.
Moscow is demanding all of that territory, and more, before it considers talks to end its war in Ukraine. This is anathema to most Ukrainians.
Ukrainian officials portrayed their work before Zelenskiy’s arrival on Monday as pragmatic diplomacy rather than preparations for a make-or-break trip.
“New York is the platform every September. It’s a super important place to be,” First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya told Reuters.
“I wish it were more expedient, but you will never have easy solutions to the conflicts of this magnitude. So I think that we will not come back from New York, all of us, with easy solutions. And we will continue to work hard after New York.”
BATTLEFIELD SETBACKS AND HEAVY LOSSES
Russian forces, which invaded in February 2022, have been grinding forwards in eastern Ukraine over the last two years but without seizing the bastion city of Pokrovsk, a target for months.
Though diminished, U.S. support remains essential for Ukraine, and Kyiv’s allies have concerns about the depth of its reserves of military personnel.
A senior European diplomat said U.S. intelligence sharing and a new mechanism for Ukraine to purchase U.S. weapons were essential for its forces to be able to hold out.
Zelenskiy has said the first weapons supplied under that mechanism included missiles for Patriot air defence systems and HIMARS rocket launchers, and that Ukraine had so far secured over $2 billion in financing for U.S.-produced arms.
Ukraine’s surer footing on weapons, the senior diplomat said, was apparent from the less urgent tone of Zelenskiy’s recent public statements.
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine’s defence minister from 2019-20, said European strategy had often focused on the idea of providing deterrence to prevent future conflict, but that Putin had no interest in stopping Russia’s war in Ukraine and Kyiv’s strategy was therefore to deny Russian forces success.
“The strategy is to neutralise Russia,” he said. “That would lead to the ability to stabilise the situation and hopefully start a recovery, at least (to some extent), without Russia agreeing to stop the war.”
LIKE A RITUAL DANCE
A former senior Ukrainian official who requested anonymity doubted Trump would sanction Russia at all and said Ukraine would be better off focusing on strengthening its armed forces.
He was dismissive of weeks of talks between Europe, the U.S. and Ukraine on security guarantees to protect Ukraine for a post-war settlement.
Comparing the process to a ritual dance, he said: “It would be very beautiful if people weren’t being killed.”
(Additional reporting by Olena Harmash and Mike Collett-White in Kyiv; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Timothy Heritage)
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