His statement precedes an EU summit scheduled for Thursday and Friday, during which leaders will discuss the possible initiation of accession talks for Ukraine and the release of €50 billion in aid to the country.
The EU’s deliberations align with a current deadlock in the US Congress over sending an additional $61 billion to Ukraine, with Republicans demanding stricter immigration controls on the US-Mexico border as a precondition for releasing the funding.
Some EU member states, including Hungary, Austria and Slovakia, have expressed reservations about sustaining support for Zelensky’s government. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has insisted that the bloc should first reach a consensus on its Ukraine strategy before deciding on policies, security guarantees, Russia sanctions, and expansion.
In an interview with Politico, Kuleba emphasized the urgency of the situation, warning that denying Kiev a fast track to membership would have “devastating strategic consequences” for the EU.
According to Politico, the minister dismissed concerns of war fatigue and frustrations over Kiev’s stalemate on the battlefield and stressed that neither Ukraine nor the EU had any viable alternative to fighting.
He also suggested that allowing Russia to defeat Ukraine would set a precedent for attacking a European country next, despite Moscow’s repeated assurances that it has no plans to launch attacks against European nations.
Top US officials have claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is plotting to attack NATO unless Congress allocates additional funding to Ukraine. Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, however, dismissed the warnings as “myth-making and a propagation of dangerous lies”. Washington, he remarked, is adding fuel to the fire of the Ukrainian conflict and has lost touch with reality.
Some US lawmakers, such as Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, have openly doubted the officials’ warnings, claiming to have “never believed that scenario” and that it was “a good selling point to send more money”.
