Zelensky Wants to Mooch Off U.S. Like Israel if He Agrees to Peace Deal
The idea of an ‘Israel Plan’ for Ukraine first surfaced in 2023
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters on Friday that any peace deal with Russia would require the promise of sustained support from the U.S., similar to the way Washington provides for Israel.
“Discussions in London have focused on security guarantees from the United States,” he said, according to RT. “We hope them to be at least as robust as those provided to Israel. Additionally, we anticipate support from our European partners and are actively developing the infrastructure necessary for these guarantees.”
Zelensky, who is Jewish, told reporters in 2022 that he eventually sees Ukraine becoming a “big Israel,” with soldiers inside “supermarkets, cinemas, there will be people with weapons.”
The Atlantic Council noted that an “Israel Plan” for Ukraine surfaced during the Joe Biden years and was seen as an alternative to NATO membership, which Biden didn’t allow. (Trump has said he does not believe Kyiv will ever join the alliance.)
The think tank wrote:
While Washington does not provide Israel with security guarantees—commitments to intervene militarily in the event of an attack—its military aid has enabled Israel to develop one of the world’s premier fighting forces.
The New York Times reported in 2023 that Biden’s aides mentioned the idea of an arrangement with Ukraine that could resemble the “Israel model,” which “has a 10-year-long security commitment” that sends $38 billion in military aid to Israel from 2019 to 2028.
The paper wrote:
While Ukraine’s would almost certainly be shorter, the idea, administration officials say, would be to convince Mr. Putin that the flow of arms and training to Kyiv will not flag — and to bleed some of the politics out of episodic debates about how much aid to commit to Ukraine in the next six months or a year.
No matter what political party is in charge in the U.S., Israel benefits from near-limitless support.
The U.S. has, for decades, provided Israel with up to $4 billion annually for its military. When House Speaker Mike Johnson took the gavel in October 2023, he told Congress his top priority was Israel.
In March, U.S. President Donald Trump invoked his “emergency authority” to bypass Congress and approve another $4 billion in weapon sales to Israel, which provided Tel Aviv with 35,529 2,000 MK 84 bombs and 4,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads.
One of Trump’s first moves as president was to restart shipments of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel that were paused under the Biden administration over concerns that the country was cavalier with their use on civilian targets.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., spoke out against the arms deal and filed joint resolutions of disapproval.
The senator said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used U.S.-provided bombs to “damage or destroy almost 70 percent of the structures in Gaza, including hundreds of schools. All of this has been done in clear violation of U.S. and international law.”
He continued, “With Trump and Netanyahu openly talking about forcibly displacing millions of Palestinians from Gaza—in other words, ethnic cleansing—it would be unconscionable to provide more of the bombs and weapons Israel has used to kill so many civilians and make life unlivable in Gaza.”
