Ukraine has made “excellent progress” on its path to EU membership, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Saturday. Standing next to President Volodymyr Zelensky, she acknowledged that Ukraine had achieved many milestones despite the war with Russia, highlighting kyiv’s judicial reforms. Zelensky took advantage of the meeting to insist that the war “is not at a stalemate”, deny Western pressures and proclaim that “we have no right to surrender” because if Ukraine gives up territories that “will only be the beginning”, just as happened in last.
“I know that you are in the process of completing pending reforms. I am sure that Ukraine will be able to achieve its ambitious goal of moving to the next stage in the accession process,” said the President of the Commission.
Von der Leyen’s visit to Kiev comes days before a key report on Kiev’s bid for accession and as Ukrainian troops face war fatigue following a stalemate on the front. Ukraine’s candidacy will be evaluated in a report to be published on November 8. The EU has already provided 83 billion euros for Ukraine and plans to send another 3 billion euros by the end of this year.
Membership talks often take years and involve extensive legal, political and economic reforms. Ukraine’s bid received a boost on Thursday when German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she was confident the EU would move forward with Ukraine’s application next month.
For Ukraine, which applied to join the European Union days after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, entering the EU is a priority. Zelensky highlighted efforts to combat corruption, improve transparency and reduce the influence of oligarchs in the economy. “The reforms will continue,” he promised.
The EU’s 27 members will meet at a summit in December to decide whether to allow kyiv to begin accession talks, which would require unanimous backing. Meanwhile, Von der Leyen is working on a proposal to use frozen Russian state assets to help Ukraine with reconstruction. A result is expected before the end of the year. Moscow has already threatened to take retaliatory measures against European assets in Russia.
The Ukrainian president has to face these days an upsurge in pessimism about Ukraine’s military possibilities. On November 1, an interview with Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny was published in The Economist magazine. Responding to the publication’s questions, Zaluzhny said the war with Russia has “reached a dead end” and that the Ukrainian offensive risks giving way to a trench war that could drag on for years.
Before journalists, Volodimir Zelensky stated that he does not consider the situation on the front to be a stalemate. “This is not a stalemate. Russia controls the sky. We take care of our military. No one wants to just abandon them, like Russia abandons its people.”
But the pressure to find a way out can start at any time. On November 4, NBC reported that the United States and Europe have begun discussing with Ukraine the possibility of peace negotiations with Russia. The purported talks focused on broad details of what kyiv might have to give up to reach a deal.
Zelensky assured that Western countries do not pressure him to start negotiations with Russia: “No one pressures me today. All this happened at the beginning of the war and before the war. Today no one pressures the leaders of the EU or the United States.”
The Ukrainian leader gave his recipe against stagnation: “How to overcome this? F-16, we have to wait for the boys to learn [to fly them], when they return, when there is air defense on the front, the military advances, using the equipment,” said the president of Ukraine.
Zelensky recalled that in 2022 everyone believed that the Ukrainian troops were stagnant. “A few military tricks and, as you remember, the Kharkiv region was liberated,” said Zelensky, who insisted that “we have no right to surrender. What is the alternative? Give away a third of our country? This will be just the beginning: we know what a frozen conflict is, we have already drawn conclusions for ourselves. We need to work more with our air defense partners, unblock the skies and give our fighters the opportunity to carry out offensive operations.”