Ukraine path to EU backed
But leaders are not promising vast arsenal in battle
European leaders on Thursday pledged support for putting Ukraine on a path to membership in the European Union but did not promise the country additional heavy weapons on the scale it says it needs to repel a bloody Russian advance in the east.
The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Romania, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine in Kyiv, all agreed to support Zelenskyy’s push to take the first step toward membership in the bloc, a move to redefine Ukraine as an integral part of Europe rather than a buffer state on its eastern rim.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said that he and his fellow leaders had come “with a clear message: Ukraine belongs to the European family.”
The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, is expected to announce on Friday its official recommendation on Ukraine’s application to become a formal candidate for membership. The approval process could take years.
The visiting leaders took pains to counter suggestions that they — particularly President Emmanuel Macron of France — would prefer a quick, negotiated end to the war, even if that rewarded Russian aggression with territorial gains.
“What I am saying today is that Ukraine must win this war,” Macron said.
The visit generated a mixed reaction in Ukraine, as the country moved closer to its long-sought goal of EU candidate status but did not gain major pledges of more longrange weapons to overcome Russia’s vast artillery advantage on the open plains of the eastern Donbas region.
“We expect new supplies, especially heavy weapons, modern rocket artillery and missile defense systems,” Zelenskyy said. “Each batch of supplies saves people’s lives. And every day of delays or postponed decisions is an opportunity for the Russian military to kill Ukrainians.”
Macron said that France would deliver six additional Caesar truckmounted howitzers in the coming weeks, on top of the 12 already delivered. The United States has given Ukraine 108 longrange howitzers and this week promised several more.
But the deliveries and commitments are a fraction of the 1,000 howitzers that an adviser to Zelenskyy said are needed for battlefield parity in eastern Ukraine. Western commitments of rocket artillery systems, tanks and other gear fall similarly short of Ukrainian requests.
The Kyiv visit was shadowed by questions about whether European leaders would press Zelenskyy to
pursue a peace deal with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, as concerns grow in European capitals over the costs of a protracted war and the risk of broader European involvement.
The Kremlin appeared to send an economic warning to EU leaders on Thursday, as Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas company, cut the flow to Europe’s most important natural gas pipeline for the second day in a row, making gas prices surge further.
Zelenskyy said the leaders had privately raised the prospect of negotiations with Moscow. But talks, he said, would not end the war.
“We touched on the theme of diplomatic efforts of various countries to achieve peace,” he said. “Everybody sees the only obstacle to all these efforts is the unreadiness of the Russian Federation for real actions, for real negotiations.”
Oleksiy Honcharenko, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament, said in an interview that he did not
view the promise of EU candidacy as a part of a deal that Europe was offering in exchange for Zelenskyy’s government moving toward cease-fire talks.
But a sense of disappointment was palpable among some Ukrainian officials.
Viktor Andrusiv, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, wrote on social media that “Macron, Scholz and Draghi are bringing us candidacy for the EU and a request to return to the negotiating process with Putin.”
European leaders insisted that they were not pressing Zelenskyy to accept a peace deal with Moscow, adhering to the Biden administration’s stance that it is up to Ukraine to decide for itself when and how to negotiate.
“We are and we will remain by your side in the long run to defend your sovereignty, your territorial integrity and your freedom,” Macron told Zelenskyy. “This is our goal, we have no other, and we will achieve it.”