President Zelensky goes to the White House today to pitch his muscular “Victory Plan” to President Biden and Vice President Harris. Yesterday at Moscow, President Putin warned that Russia is changing its official doctrine to allow a nuclear attack on any nuclear nation that helps another country attack Russia with conventional weapons.

Mr. Putin’s direct threat to America addresses a major worry for Russia this fall: that Mr. Biden will authorize Ukraine to use American, British, and French long-range missiles to hit military targets inside Russia. A green light for missile launches is part of Mr. Zelensky’s plan to gain the military upper hand by the end of this year. Other elements include more military aid, more sanctions against Russia, and a bilateral defense agreement.

“Russia can only be forced into peace, and that is exactly what’s needed – forcing Russia into peace,” Ukraine’s president told the United Nations Security Council Tuesday.  Separately, he told ABC News: “We are closer to peace than we think. We just have to be very strong, very strong.”

In addition to attaining peace through strength, Mr. Zelensky also seeks to “Trump-proof” American military support in case Vice President Harris loses the presidential election.  Briefing reporters before he embarked Saturday on a week-long visit to America, Ukraine’s biggest backer, Mr. Zelensky told reporters: “Let’s do all this today, while all the officials who want victory for Ukraine are still in official positions.”

Today, Mr. Biden is expected to announce about $8 billion in military aid to Ukraine, much of  it already approved. However, he is not expected to take any dramatic steps that could impact what is seen as a tight presidential race.

Ukraine’s president has always sought to project an image of neutrality in the race. This week, though, he walked into the buzzsaw of American election season politics.

“I demand that you immediately fire Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova,” Speaker Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, wrote yesterday in a letter to Mr. Zelensky. Ms. Markarova’s sin was organizing a visit Sunday to an Army Ammunition plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, hometown of Mr. Biden. The host was Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a Harris supporter.

“The facility was in a politically contested battleground state, was led by a top political surrogate for Kamala Harris, and failed to include a single Republican because — on purpose — no Republicans were invited,” wrote Mr. Johnson, whose political leadership will be needed this winter if Ukraine is to receive more American military aid. “The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference.”

London-based Ukraine analyst Timothy Ash fired back yesterday, emailing his clients, saying Ms. Markarova “has been a superb Ambassador to the U.S. Is the GOP now acting on the direct orders of Putin as her firing would be in his interests?”

Sunday’s visit to a swing state with hundreds of thousands of voters of Eastern European origin enraged President Trump. He charged Ukraine’s leader with wanting the Democrats “to win this election so badly.”  His aides say a planned Trump-Zelensky meeting is now off. 

“The president of Ukraine is in our country, and he’s making little, nasty aspersions toward your favorite president — me,” Trump said yesterday at a campaign stop at Mint Hill, North Carolina. “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal: Zelensky.”

The deal the Trump-Vance ticket favors is a land for peace arrangement. Two weeks ago, the GOP vice presidential nominee, Senator Vance, told a podcaster that this deal would involve freezing fighting lines in place, creating a demilitarized zone, Ukraine adopting a neutral foreign policy, and no membership in NATO. 

After this plan came out, Mr. Zelensky told the New Yorker that Mr. Vance is “too radical.” He charged that such a ceasefire would simply give Russia the time to rearm for another attack. Ukraine’s leader ventured: “My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war, even if he might think he knows how.”

These comments brought out skepticism about Ukraine in the Trump camp.  “Biden and Kamala allowed this to happen by feeding Zelensky money and munitions like no country has ever seen before,” Trump told a rally at Savannah on Tuesday. “We’re stuck in that war — unless I’m president,” he continued. Ignoring the fact that there are no American troops in Ukraine, he promised: “I’ll get it done. I’ll get it negotiated. I’ll get out. We gotta get out.”

Meanwhile, Moscow ratchets up nuclear brinkmanship after a swarm of 100 Ukrainian-made drones blew up one of Russia’s largest ammunition dumps last week. This massive explosion, 400 miles north of Ukraine, blew up 750,000 shells or “two to three months’ supply of ammunition” for the Russian army, Colonel Ants Kiviselg, head of the Estonian Defense Forces Intelligence Center, told the ERR news site. This massive explosion was followed over the weekend by two more successful Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian ammunition depots.

Ukrainian-made drones and missiles now can fly twice as far as American Army tactical missiles, better known as Atacms, British Storm Shadows, and French Scalp missiles. However, these Western-made missiles fly far faster, are highly accurate, and carry a far bigger punch. Ukraine has been allowed to use them on Russia-occupied Crimea, which is internationally recognized as occupied Ukrainian land. The impact has been to defang what once was a Russian fortress.

America and Britain are not alone. Last week, the European Parliament voted  — 425 in favor, 131 against — to encourage all member countries to allow Ukraine to use weapons to strike “legitimate military targets” in Russia. Separately, President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission visited Kyiv last week and said the EU would lend Ukraine up to $40 billion.

“On every occasion Ukraine asks for something from the United States, as for example right now in the Victory Plan, Putin changes the subject to vague threats that might concern us, so that we can experience personal anxiety,” a Yale scholar of Eastern European history, Timothy Snyder blogged yesterday. “Where American leaders believe that they are managing escalation, Russians know that they are managing (our) anxiety.  This is what they do, and they do it well.”

Offering his analysis of the Kremlin’s game plan, Mr. Snyder wrote: “The Russian goal is to make the Biden team move slowly so that Russia can keep fighting until Trump arrives to save them.”