European leaders are poised to grant Ukraine candidate status, a move that usually takes years

[yaesu]

EU leaders meeting in Brussels are expected to approve Ukraine’s candidate status later on Thursday, nearly four months after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy launched his country’s bid to join the bloc in the early days of the Russian invasion.

The move from applicant to candidate usually takes years, but the EU has dramatically accelerated the process, amid outrage over the brutality of the unprovoked Russian attack, and to show solidarity with Ukraine’s defenders.

“Ukraine is going through hell for a simple reason: its desire to join the EU,” tweeted the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on the eve of the summit. The commission last week called on EU leaders to grant Ukraine’s candidate status. “Our opinion acknowledges the immense progress that [Ukrainian] democracy has achieved since the Maidan protests of 2014,” Von der Leyen said.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said candidate status would “draw a line under decades of ambiguity and set it in stone: Ukraine is Europe, not part of the ‘Russian world’”.


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[OnDoutside]

1. Still a long way off formal membership but an important step. The

next important step they can take after the war is to rid the country of endemic corruption, and put in all the guard rails to protect and encourage democracy.....god knows they can pick up all the failings of Western democracies, and build them in.

[Lovie777]

2. And ......

how does it favor Ukraine in it's fight for survival over the aggressor RF?

Germany in 2008 declined Ukraine's entry to Nato, I know it's the past but damn.