At her arrival at an informal meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Kiev, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated, "The future of Ukraine is in the European Union, in our community of freedom, and soon it will expand from Lisbon to Luhansk. With every village, with every meter that Ukraine liberates, with every meter where it saves its people, it also expands its path to the EU”.
“Ukraine’s future ‘lies in’ the European Union, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Monday, adding that the bloc would soon incorporate regions that had joined Russia in 2022 but are still claimed by Kiev.
‘[The EU] will soon stretch from Lisbon to Lugansk’, Baerbock told journalists on the sidelines of the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in the Ukrainian capital.
Lugansk is the capital of the Lugansk People’s Republic – one of the two former eastern Ukrainian regions that declared independence from Kiev in 2014 in the wake of the Western-backed Maidan coup in Kiev. Russia recognized its independence in February of 2022, just days before the start of its military campaign in Ukraine. In the autumn of 2022, the Lugansk People’s Republic joined Russia, together with three other former Ukrainian territories following a series of referendums.
Kiev has never recognized the results of the vote and called the referendums a ‘sham’. It still considers the four territories – as well as Crimea, which rejoined Russia in 2014 after a referendum– to be part of Ukraine.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that it was ready for peace talks with Kiev but only if the ‘reality on the ground’ is recognized, which includes the four regions’ decision to be part of Russia.
On Monday, Baerbock said that ‘every village… every meter’ the Ukrainian troops seize from Russian forces brings Kiev closer to EU membership. She did not name any specific timeline linked to Ukraine’s potential accession to the bloc.
The leaders of the EU member states are supposed to discuss the start of accession talks with Kiev at a meeting on Friday in Granada, Spain. The EU Commission is allegedly expected to provide a recommendation on the issue in November, with the final decision being taken in mid-December, Germany’s news outlet Stern reported.
Earlier, Bloomberg reported that some member states have concerns about the potential overextension of the bloc by accepting Ukraine and channeling resources toward it. Also, Politico reported in September that the EU believed Ukraine was a ‘very corrupt country’, adding that the prevalence of graft could affect its membership prospects”. -RT
The Russian Foreign Ministry has responded to the claim that the European Union will one day stretch as far as the Donbass by stating that the only way for Baerbock to fulfill her promise of EU eastward expansion would be for the Russian Federation to become a member of the European bloc itself.
Baerbock’s remarks tend to bolster the case for Russia that the neocolonial West has, indeed, been directly involved in the Ukrainian war and that the Kremlin now has the sufficient pretext to launch a retaliatory attack on hostile European countries.