Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told \u200ban EU summit on Thursday the future of Europe was being shaped by the defense of Ukraine and the best security guarantee for the bloc\u2019s future would be to grant Kyiv fast-track membership.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said he told member states that Ukraine wanted the war against Russia to be over by the end of the year and urged them to help Kyiv prepare for another winter with air defense missiles and fuel.<\/p>\n
Every democratic nation in Europe deserved to be in the EU and \u201cUkraine merits this because it has paid more than any other country for its right to be free, independent and … European,\u201d Zelensky said in excerpts of his address posted on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe future of Europe \u2013 free, united and of course in peace \u2013 is being decided in \u200cour defense. That \u200cshows how unique our situation is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hours earlier, Ukrainian air strikes struck targets deep inside \u200bRussia, \u200cincluding \u2060an oil \u200brefinery \u2060in Moscow, the latest long-range attacks in a campaign Zelensky highlighted as proof of Ukraine\u2019s capabilities in meetings with US President Donald Trump and other G7 leaders in France this week.<\/p>\n
In his message to the EU leaders, he acknowledged that not all members would support an accelerated accession, with Hungary demanding the removal of such language from an European Council statement released after the summit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most important such step \u2014 I know that not everyone loves this \u2014 could be a fast-track path for Ukraine to join the EU,\u201d Zelensky said.<\/p>\n
EU ambassadors agreed last week to advance membership talks with Ukraine and ex-Soviet Moldova, with discussions beginning on the first of six legal and \u2060policy \u201cclusters\u201d to bring legislation and standards into line with the bloc.<\/p>\n
A statement issued by the \u200cEuropean Council after the summit welcomed the beginning of accession talks for Ukraine \u200cand said it \u201clooks forward to the opening of the other clusters, in line with \u200bthe merit-based approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Hungary managed to remove a reference \u200cto accelerating accession for Ukraine from the statement, Prime Minister Peter Magyar said on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told \u200ban EU summit on Thursday the future of Europe was being shaped by the defense of Ukraine and the best security guarantee for the bloc\u2019s future would be to grant Kyiv fast-track membership. Zelensky said he told member states that Ukraine wanted the war against Russia to be over by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99281,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99264\/revisions\/99281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}