- Zelenskyy told reporters Wednesday that he thinks Ukraine can defeat Russia within one year.
- That jars with recent comments by his own officials, including his foreign minister and top general.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a surprising and optimistic prediction for the end of the war with Russia, saying he thought he could secure victory by July 2024.
Speaking at a NATO summit in eastern Europe, Zelenskyy said he hoped Ukraine would win the war in time for the next summit, which is being held in Washington, DC, in about a year's time.
NATO made clear that Ukraine can't joint while it is still at war, leading Zelenskyy and some around them to suggest it could still join quickly by achieving victory.
Earlier this month, Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukraine's Presidential Office, said he was confident Ukraine will "receive a full invitation" to the Washington summit because "by this time, Russia will finally lose its subjectivity and cease to exist as a country that can wage wars."
16 months into the war, few observers are suggesting that either side is in a position to win quickly.
And some of Ukraine's other officials, including its Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba, appear to agree, and are planning for the long haul.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe published on Wednesday, Kuleba seemed to have a far different timeline in mind, saying he hoped that Ukraine would be in a position to use F-16 fighter jets by around March 2024, a significantly humbler aim than victory.
"Training [for the F-16s] should begin sometime in August, possibly early September," he told Radio Free Europe. "I think that if by the end of the first quarter of next year, the first F-16s fly in Ukrainian air, piloted by Ukrainian pilots, then it will be according to the schedule."
While not mentioning a specific time frame, Ukraine's top military general, Valery Zaluzhny, told The Washington Post last month that even the slow progress in Ukraine's counteroffensive was extraordinary given its limited arsenal.
He also admonished observers who were expecting quick results as unrealistic.
"This is not a show," Zaluzhny told The Post. "It's not a show the whole world is watching and betting on or anything. Every day, every meter is given by blood."
"Without being fully supplied, these plans are not feasible at all," he added. "But they are being carried out. Yes, maybe not as fast as the participants, the observers, would like, but that is their problem."
Ukraine has aggressively pressed its case to join NATO, a yearslong aim which existing members have been hesitant to attach to a particular timeline.
NATO said in 2008 that Ukraine could join at a future date, but declined its September 2022 request for "fast-track" membership.
Earlier in the summit Zelenskyy decried the lack of a defined timeline as "unprecedented and absurd."
Experts previously told Insider that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine that could end the war remain a distant prospect.
John E. Herbst, who was the US ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006, told that Putin would need to conclude "there's really no way in the world to achieve his objective" before he would be prepared to negotiate.