On Wednesday, 8 June, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Ruslan Stefanchuk called for Ukraine to be granted EU candidate status during the European Council on 24 June.
“[Let’s] do everything together [so] that, [to] this new history that Ukraine is writing with its blood, we would add a very simple addition, written [in] pen, that Ukraine is a candidate for the European Union,” he stressed in a solemn address during the plenary session in Strasbourg.
The chairman of the Verkhovna Rada explained that his mission was to convince everyone of the need to grant his country candidate status, adding that he was aware that it was a status and nothing more. Mr Stefanchuk promised, “We are clearly aware and guarantee that we—having received this impetus, this political message—are prepared to work further, are prepared to work quickly and qualitatively” as we did when responding to the European Commission’s questionnaires.
In his opinion, it is very important for Ukrainians to hear this “powerful message” from the EU that “what you are doing is not in vain”. Mr Stefanchuk warned, “If on the 24th of June, we’re not going to get this message, then this will be the message that Putin will get, and he will clearly understand that he can be totally going forward without any punishment.”
The chairman also called on the European Union to adopt more sanctions against Russia. In his view, if the war continues despite the sanctions already in place, it probably means that more needs to be done for the war to become unsustainable for Mr Putin and for him to be forced to end it “because he [does] not have [the] funds to fund his war”. While understanding that this was sometimes a burden on the budgets of European countries, Mr Stefanchuk felt that the price of Ukraine’s defeat would be “way, way bigger”.
“[We] are fighting, and we will win, and we’ll do it together,” he promised, welcoming the EU and its member states’ support for Ukraine. The chairman of the Verkhovna Rada notably thanked Europeans for welcoming 6 million Ukrainian refugees and for numerous countries referring Ukraine’s situation to the International Criminal Court so as to investigate Russian crimes in his country—expressing confidence that justice would prevail. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)