Mykhailo Pashkov, co-director of the Razumkov Centre’s Foreign Relations and International Security Programmes, spoke on the upcoming June EU summit, at which they will consider the issue of granting Ukraine the status of a candidate for EU membership. This will be a moment of truth, a symbolic opportunity for Brussels at the most difficult moment of the war to prove solidarity with the country that is fighting for its European choice.

Kyiv has noticeably stepped up its political and diplomatic campaign to lobby for the EU candidate status. President Zelenskyy is holding a series of relevant negotiations with the leaders of the EU countries. A government delegation has been formed to visit the capitals of the most “problematic” EU countries. Recently, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament was in the German capital with a similar mission.

For Ukraine, acquiring the status of an EU membership candidate is important, on the one hand, because it puts an end to strategic uncertainty in relations with the EU, formalises Kyiv's European integration course, and is essentially a sentence to the Kremlin’s plans for the so-called “forced reincarnation” of the post-Soviet space. On the other hand, the EUcandidacy is an impulse for internal transformations and a moral and political incentive for citizens of Ukraine who defend their European future.