EU’s Michel visits wartime Kyiv on anniversary of pro-West revolution

Charles Michel, President of the European Council, arrives to speak to the media as Denmark hosts a meeting on the future of the EU, at Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen, Denmark, Tuesday November 14, 2023. Martin Sylvest/Ritzau Scanpix/via REUTERS/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights

KYIV, Nov 21 (Reuters) – European Council President Charles Michel visited wartime Kyiv on Tuesday as Ukraine marks 10 years since the start of mass protests that toppled a Moscow-backed president and set Kyiv on a resolute pro-Western course.

Michel’s visit to the Ukrainian capital 21 months into Russia’s full-scale invasion comes weeks before Kyiv hopes the European Union’s leaders will agree to launch the long process of formal negotiations for it to join the bloc.

“Good to be back in Kyiv – among friends,” Michel wrote on social media platform X.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a video address, said aspirations to join the European Union had been a “romantic dream” in Kyiv two decades ago but had now become a “reality” and that “it is no longer possible to stop our progress”.

“Therefore, our candidate status and further accession negotiations should certainly result in Ukraine’s full membership in the EU,” he said.

Maia Sandu, the pro-European president of former Soviet Moldova, which is also hoping to secure the start of formal EU accession talks next month, travelled to Kyiv and met Zelenskiy.

Ukraine and Moldova have been conducting a set of reforms to win over members of the EU to further their bids amid signs of an increasingly gloomy outlook from Brussels ahead of the EU summit next month.

A senior EU official told Reuters last week that the formal launch of talks next month could be “at risk”, sounding a downbeat note at time when global attention has shifted from the war in Ukraine to the conflict in Gaza.

On the battlefield, Kyiv’s counteroffensive has not delivered the breakthrough many Ukrainians had wanted. Concerns have also grown over the sustainability of billions of dollars of vital Western economic and military assistance.

With Michel in town, Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday preliminarily approved several key draft laws of anti-corruption legislation that had been recommended by Brussels to beef up Kyiv’s fight against graft.

The measures include expanding the staff of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and strengthening safeguards for the anti-corruption prosecutor.

DIGNITY AND FREEDOM

Sandu posted a video of her, Zelenskiy and Zelenskiy’s wife Olena paying their respects to the scores of protesters – known in Ukraine as the “Heavenly Hundred” – who lost their lives during the revolution of 2014.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, also on a trip to Kyiv, announced a new military aid package of 1.3 billion euros that will include four additional IRIS-T air defence systems.

Ukraine has been trying to build up its air defences fearing that Russia plans to conduct a second winter of air strikes on the energy system and power grid.

Ukraine, which gained independence from Soviet Moscow in 1991, marks a Day of Dignity and Freedom on Tuesday to commemorate its two pro-Western, pro-democratic revolutions in 2004 and 2014.

The 2014 revolution, which the Kremlin casts as a foreign-sponsored coup, prompted Russian troops to seize and annex the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and back a militant insurrection in the east.

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