After briefly presenting his Victory Plan at the seat of Ukraine’s national sovereignty, the Verkhovna Rada, Volodymyr Zelensky has continued his tour to try to win the support of the people and institutions that really matter – his foreign partners. In Brussels, the Ukrainian president sought to curry favour with one of his main suppliers, the current support of the Ukrainian state, the European Union, whose Parliament once again welcomed him as a hero. “The last time you were here,” wrote Roberta Metsola, “I promised you our unwavering support on your country’s path to EU membership. Today I am proud to welcome you to the House of European Democracy as the leader of a candidate country for EU membership.” “Ukraine is Europe,” she said, deliberately confusing the continent with the political bloc. However, with EU entry long understood as a decision that has been made and that it is simply a matter of time, Zelensky’s speech did not focus on the benefits of the Union or the enormous benefit that will be obtained by admitting Ukraine into the European family, but on the continuation of his campaign to formalize the Victory Plan as a possible way out of the war. Kiev is acting in the same way that in the last decade it has managed to institutionalize the nationalist discourse, previously only characteristic of a part of the country, as the only possible national discourse. Ukraine is working to achieve the same objective and to make its plan – in reality a wish list that its allies must help it to fulfill and not a roadmap to achieve them – appear as a path to a just peace.

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