Successful accession to EU is as important as frontline

Everything is just beginning, but negotiations with the EU are a geopolitical and value shift.

For Putin and the Kremlin, Ukraine's membership in the European Union is a strategic defeat, because they want to destroy the West and the world that emerged after World War II.

Moscow wanted to postpone our integration into the EU forever, which led to both us and the EU switching to a different gear and jointly setting the goal of the movement - not in political statements, but in real actions.

For us, this process is vital, our very existence depends on it. The stake in joining the EU is our existence as a country and a nation.

The Kremlin also understands that our return to Europe is the end of the reality they have invented for themselves, which means it is also vital for them, only in a negative sense. They will do everything possible and impossible to kill and destroy our integration. The best option for them is for Ukraine to not exist at all.

Successful accession to the EU is as important as the frontline, though of course in a different way. We must not lose the strategic sense of what this is all about, we must not fixate on the details (although we cannot do without them), letting go of the strategic perspective.

Moscow is already sending waves across Europe that our agriculture will be "finished off" by the EU, and everyone will be left without their budgets. And it is very important for us to keep the EU countries aware that it is stronger with us, that we are not part of the problem, but part of the only possible solution for it not to fall under the Russian skate in the future.

This is still not obvious to everyone, and it will need to be proved. A geopolitical Europe can emerge only with Ukraine, or it will not emerge at all. 

Source

About the author. Pavlo Klimkin, diplomat, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

The editors do not always share the opinions expressed by the blog authors.