Zelenskyy has no cards to play against Russia or the West

In April, Russian oil revenues surged to $9bn, thanks to the US-Israel war on Iran. The windfall Russia got in a month is equivalent to 10 percent of the loan Ukraine is to receive from the European Union over the next two years to help fund its war effort.

It cannot be denied that Russia has sustained major economic losses due to the war, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged as much. But the Russian economy displays much the same downturn as other European economies, also affected by wars in Ukraine and Iran.

Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity (an indicator reflecting living standards) currently exceeds that of less affluent EU countries, such as Romania and Greece, according to the IMF charts. The same indicator for Ukraine is on par with Mongolia and Egypt, while the country’s critical infrastructure lies in ruins and millions of Ukrainians have fled the country, most of them for good.

With Ukraine’s prospects bleaker than ever, pro-Ukrainian audiences jump on every news from Russia, which they hope may signify “cracks in the regime”. Last month, an Instagram video by Russian influencer Victoria Bonya made Western headlines for its daring criticism of government policies. There may be frustration in Russia, but the regime is far from approaching a downfall.

This narrative, however, serves to distract Ukrainian and EU citizens from the painful truth that the war is heading towards a deadlock at best and Ukraine’s collapse at worst. Zelenskyy may have received a lifeline with the $90bn euro loan, but his and his allies’ lack of vision and winning strategy is staggering.

The reality has already begun to kick in. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently suggested that Ukraine would have to concede some of its territory to Russia to end the war but get a faster track to EU membership in exchange. The EU’s defence chief, Andrius Kubilius, has gone further by claiming that NATO membership for Ukraine was out of the question and EU membership was going to be a “complicated process”. Instead, he proposed a military union of Ukraine and other European countries – an idea that Moscow will reject, interpreting it as NATO through the back door.

What these contradictory statements manifest is that the main bargain over the contours of peace is currently going not so much between Zelenskyy and Putin, but between Zelenskyy and his Western, primarily European, allies.

As Budanov recently claimed, the positions of Kyiv and Moscow can be moved closer to what is realistically attainable in peace talks. But Zelenskyy needs to show at least some kind of gain for Ukraine when a very unpalatable version of a peace treaty is finally signed. Ideally, that gain would be EU membership or real security guarantees, but as Merz and Kubilius’s statements suggest, the chances of attaining either are slim.

The frustration among Ukrainians is already palpable. The head of the Ukrainian parliament’s fiscal committee, Danylo Hetmantsev, said European officials should stop seeing Ukrainians as “a tool for solving someone’s geopolitical tasks” or as a “human shield”. They have no right to define Ukraine’s destiny, he insisted.

But Zelenskyy, who is dogged by a large-scale investigation into corruption involving his immediate entourage, seems to hold no cards to play against Russia or his Western allies. The status quo in which he retains the position of a war leader serves him well, but it is increasingly becoming untenable.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.