Request for admission to the EU
Selenskyi reports from embattled Kiev
02/26/2022, 09:59 am
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has repeatedly spoken out on Twitter. Now he’s releasing a 40-second video from the embattled capital. In another tweet, he reaffirmed the country’s will to become a member of the EU.
In a new video message, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed his will to persevere in the fight against the Russian attack. In the apparently self-made video, he walks through the streets of Kiev. He apparently wants to counter rumors that he has asked the army to surrender to the Russian troops.
“There is a lot of false information on the Internet that I am calling on our army to lay down their arms and that there is an evacuation,” he said against the background of the Gorodetsky house in Kiev. “I’m here. We will not lay down our arms. We will defend our state.” The 40-second video is titled, “Don’t believe the fakes.”
Zelenskyj is also calling for his country’s admission to the European Union. “It is a crucial moment to end the long-standing discussion once and for all and to decide on Ukraine’s membership in the #EU,” the Ukrainian President tweeted from the embattled capital of Kyiv. He discussed “further effective aid” and the “heroic struggle of the Ukrainians for their free future” with EU Council President Charles Michel.
EU membership for Ukraine has so far been considered impossible. According to experts, such a step would also make an agreement with Russia impossible. The question of rapprochement with the EU triggered the mass protests on Kiev’s central Maidan square. They led to the fall of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. As a result, Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, and war broke out in eastern Ukraine.