By Jekaterina Golubkova and Ronald Popeski<\/p>\n
June 19 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told an EU summit on Thursday the future of Europe was being shaped by the defence of Ukraine and the best security guarantee for the bloc’s future would be to grant Kyiv fast-track membership.<\/p>\n
Zelenskiy said he \u200ctold member states that Ukraine wanted the war against Russia to be over by the end of the year and urged them to help Kyiv \u200cprepare for another winter with air defence missiles and fuel.<\/p>\n
Every democratic nation in Europe deserved to be in the EU and “Ukraine merits this because it has paid more than any other country for its right to \u200bbe free, independent and … European”, Zelenskiy said in excerpts of his address posted on X.<\/p>\n
“The future of Europe \u2013 free, united and of course in peace \u2013 is being decided in our defence. That shows how unique our situation is.”<\/p>\n
Hours earlier, Ukrainian air strikes struck targets deep inside Russia, including an oil refinery in Moscow, the latest long-range attacks in a campaign Zelenskiy highlighted as proof of Ukraine’s capabilities in meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump and other G7 leaders in France this week.<\/p>\n
In his message to the EU leaders, he acknowledged that \u200cnot all members would support an accelerated accession, with Hungary \u2060demanding the removal of such language from an European Council statement released after the summit.<\/p>\n
“The most important such step – I know that not everyone loves this – could be a fast-track path for Ukraine to join the EU,” Zelenskiy said.<\/p>\n
EU ambassadors agreed last week to advance \u2060membership talks with Ukraine and ex-Soviet Moldova, with discussions beginning on the first of six legal and policy “clusters” to bring legislation and standards into line with the bloc.<\/p>\n
A statement issued by the European Council after the summit welcomed the beginning of accession talks for Ukraine and said it “looks forward to the opening of the other clusters, in line with the merit-based approach”.<\/p>\n
But Hungary \u200bmanaged \u200bto remove a reference to accelerating accession for Ukraine from the statement, Prime Minister Peter Magyar said \u200bon X.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t easy,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
END THE WAR THIS YEAR<\/p>\n
Ukraine, which \u200chas also sought U.S. support for its efforts to find a peace solution for more than four-year-long conflict, wants to end the war this year, Zelenskiy said in subsequent comments posted on Telegram.<\/p>\n
“Of course, we want to end this war before winter \u2013 through diplomacy and by putting pressure on Russia. But we understand who we’re dealing with,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Putin is war,” he added, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukraine would need gas, diesel fuel, the energy equipment and a missile package of at least 300 missiles if the war extends further, Zelenskiy said.<\/p>\n
The security of Europe depended on securing funding for Ukraine’s military, and the EU and the “coalition of the willing” countries supporting Kyiv could \u200cdevelop the financial instruments to ensure that, he added.<\/p>\n
He also called for the disbursement of 6 \u200bbillion euros ($6.9 billion) from an EU European Peace Facility intended to uphold international security.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian drone attack \u200bon Moscow’s oil refinery was the second this week in what Kyiv cast \u200bas a response to an attack that damaged a nearly 1,000-year-old monastery in the city. Russia has denied responsibility for that attack.<\/p>\n
In an \u200caudio message issued at the end of the summit and an \u200bearlier meeting of the “Ramstein” group on military assistance \u200bfor Ukraine, Zelenskiy restated that Ukraine was ready for talks with Putin on resolving the war. But he urged Europe to remain vigilant and maintain pressure on Moscow.<\/p>\n
“Europe has to be engaged for us to have a strong position, to commit fully on sanctions without loopholes, on confiscation without exceptions and on \u200bfunding Ukraine,” he said.<\/p>\n
He also urged Ukrainians to be prepared \u200cfor new attacks by Russian forces which could “intensify missile and drone strikes on us. Please make use of the shelters, I urge you.”<\/p>\n
Russian Foreign Minister \u200bSergei Lavrov, speaking after the Ukrainian drone attack on Thursday, said Moscow would carry out “massive coordinated strikes on a regular basis” against Ukraine.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bRon Popeski and Jekater\u012bna Golubkova; Editing by Nia Williams, Sanjeev Miglani and Stephen Coates)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jekaterina Golubkova and Ronald Popeski June 19 (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told an EU summit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[39,2875,4,40,28,15447],"class_list":["post-73735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-eu","tag-eu-summit","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-ukraine","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}