The Foreign Ministry expressed disappointment with the position of Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, who believes that he believes that Ukraine should not be offered membership in the European Union.
This was stated to European Pravda by Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko.
“We are disappointed with the statements of the Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs of Austria about the European future of Ukraine. We consider them strategically short-sighted and not in the interests of a united Europe,” he said.
According to him, such statements also ignore the fact that the vast majority of the population of the founding countries of the EU supports Ukraine’s membership.
He recalled the words of Minister Dmitry Kuleba that the Ukrainian people are paying too high a price for the mistakes of many European governments and that their biased perception of reality has already led to the political and economic weakening of Europe.
“It seems that the current war, victims and destruction are not enough for them. To continue, under various pretexts, to postpone Ukraine’s membership in the EU or to look for an alternative to it means to indulge Putin’s aggressive plans and slow down the strengthening of the European Union by including Ukraine’s capabilities,” Nikolenko said.
“Ukraine has every reason to demand objective recognition of its merits and strategic role for the EU. Thanks to the invincible will and courage of the President of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, Europe today can live in peace. Without exaggeration, our state has become an outpost for protecting EU security, European freedom and European values” , the Foreign Ministry stressed.
Recall, according to the Austrian minister, Ukraine should not be offered membership in the European Union.
In particular, the minister believes that Ukraine should not receive candidate status in June, as President Zelensky expects.
He justified his position by the fact that there are states of the Western Balkans that have gone a much longer way to the candidacy.