Zelensky has Six Months to Win the War for the West

Posted: May 11th, 2023

By Tim Willasey-Wilsey

Tim Willasey-Wilsey served for over 27 years in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and is now Visiting Professor of War Studies at King's College, London. His first overseas posting was in Angola during the Cold War followed by Central America during the instability of the late 1980s. He was also involved in the transition to majority rule in South Africa and in the Israel/Palestine issue. His late career was spent in Asia including a posting to Pakistan in the mid 1990s.

If Ukraine does not defeat Russia in the coming six months, the West is likely to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But an acceptable negotiated outcome will be almost impossible to achieve. Following Putin’s recent diplomatic successes, the West can ill afford another foreign policy failure.

OPINION — The NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg sounded reassuringly robust when he declared recently that “All NATO allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a member” but he omitted a timeframe in which that might happen. The German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius dampened any elation with the words, “The door is open a crack, but this is not the time to decide now.”

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