And a half years into the full scale invasion of
its country. Ukraine has opened accession negotiations to become
a full member of the European Union. The talks
are starting 10 years since pro Russian President Viktor Yanukovych
refused to sign an association agreement with the Eu prompting
widespread protests and deaths in the capital Kiev. It's
also 10 years since Putin annexed Crimea and started his
aggression in the eastern part of the country. But
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister says Ukraine will implement the necessary
reforms to become a member as fast as possible if
Ukraine will be a member of the European Union and
we will be able to complete everything before 2020 30
. The eu accession process is long and there are
many potential blockages ahead despite the best efforts of the
teams from Ukraine and Moldova, which is also starting
negotiations. Eu member states have complete control of the
process and each one must sign off on any progress
made and it's possible, Hungary could try to block
Kiev's advancement as it frequently refuses to support any measures
to boost Ukraine. Moreover, even Ukraine's strongest allies
have demanded restrictions on Ukrainian imports into the single market
. If you look at the Ukrainian grain dispute.
Here, we saw the most important allies of Ukraine
within the Eu including Poland and Czechia actually objecting to
something that could have helped Ukraine and was helping Ukraine
enormously. Now, to me, that is entirely
against the spirit of the enlargement process. And I
think it, it, it begs the question about
whether the member states are really serious and whether or
not there's this big gap between the rhetorical enlargement and
the substantive one. Nevertheless, today accession talks are
being hailed as a moment of victory for Kiev amid
the ongoing struggle to resist further Russian military occupation.
Shona Murray, Euronews Brussels.