Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that any alternative to Ukraine’s candidacy for European Union membership would be a “compromise” with Russia, in his response to the “European Political Organization” project proposed by his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.
“We do not need alternatives to Ukraine’s candidacy for membership in the European Union, and we do not need such compromises,” Zelensky said at a press conference in Kyiv with Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa.
“Because, honestly, there will be no settlements with Ukraine in relation to Europe, it will be another concession between Europe and Russia. I am absolutely sure of that. It is the influence and political and diplomatic pressure that Russian officials and lobbyists exert on whether or not a European country should support Ukraine.” .
French President Emmanuel Macron presented the “European Political Organization” project on May 9 before the European Parliament in Strasbourg (eastern France), in the midst of discussing the launch of the accession process for Ukraine, which has been under Russian attack since February 24.
But he made it clear that the mechanism of accession to the European Union presented by Kyiv, would take “decades” in parallel, proposing the creation of a “new European organization” to which Ukraine would join and might include Britain, which left the European Union in 2020, or Moldova.
