In many ways what led to war between Ukraine and Russia was the decision by Ukrainian society to pursue a democratic future in the European Union rather than to continue to live under oppressive, corrupt, and oligarchic Russian influence.
In 2013, the Verkhovna Rada overwhelmingly voted to approve the finalization of the EU - Ukraine Association Agreement. This decisively signalled that Kyiv chooses Brussels over Moscow and its EU rival, the Eurasian Economic Union.
In the months leading up to the signing of the agreement, Moscow launched an intense economic blackmail campaign. Russia blocked critical Ukrainian imports at its borders, and threatened to cut off natural gas supplies and increase fuel prices. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych folded under this pressure, and scrapped the deal just days before its signing. Instead, he accepted a personal bribe of $1 billion, a $15 billion financial bailout package, and a 33% discount on natural gas directly from Vladimir Putin, going against both popular will and the country’s democratic institutions.
This betrayal has sparked immediate outrage. Protesters flooded into Kyiv's Maidan Square, demanding European integration and the dismantling of Russia's influence in the country. Yanukovych decided to crush the protests by shooting in the crowd, which lead to his removal and eventual fleeing from the country.
The Revolution of Dignity succeeded, but Ukraine had little time to celebrate. Using the interim chaos as a pretext and opportunity Russian “Little Green Men” entered Crimea, swiftly took over the peninsula, and annexed it to Russia. Emboldened by this success, one month later Putin tried to replicate it in the Donbas, but the reorganised Ukrainian forces managed to stop them. The attempt failed, and ended with the creation of the Donbas mockublics.
From a Ukrainian perspective, the confrontation with Russia, the following annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas, and now the full-scale invasion were always about the right to join the EU.
The Recent History of Ukrainian EU Accession
Before the events of 2013-2014 Ukrainian EU membership was nothing but an afterthought both in member states and in Brussels. It was certainly something for the EU to strive for geopolitically, but also an undertaking that would cause more issues than it was worth. A realistic Ukrainian EU accession was somewhere between that of Turkey and Bosnia.
After 2014 with a significant portion of Ukraine’s territory and population being under Russian occupation it became even more difficult. The bloc aimed to keep Moscow as a neutral and transactional partner and was careful not to antagonize it. Europe benefitted from buying a substantial amount of its gas and oil from Russia. This kept the continent under the delusion that economic entanglement would deter the Kremlin’s revisionist tendencies. In reality, it only emboldened them and made the country more stable, richer, and provided it with immense leverage over Europe.
After the 2022 full scale invasion, Ukrainian membership has begun to steadily rise in importance for Brussels as well. As the war dragged on it slowly but surely became not only Ukraine’s struggle but essentially the EU’s first own war as well. A Ukrainian defeat no longer meant only a disaster for Ukrainians, but also for Europeans, and especially for the European Union as an entity. It would be a significant prestige and legitimacy hit for Brussels along with a geostrategic nightmare having progressively more authoritarian and militaristic Russia with more than 140 million people strengthened with a Ukraine of 35 million people.
By 2026 this dynamic became even more pronounced. Europe effectively became the sole external guarantor and provider for Kyiv’s survival and its war efforts. Weapons production in Ukraine became tightly linked with the continent, and Kyiv possessed Europe’s most technologically advanced arms industry and the only military prepared for the wars of the 21st century.
The battle hardened country has found itself with enormous leverage over Europe. With the US becoming an unreliable ally at best, on whom it would be borderline suicidal to base the entire continent’s defence strategy, and an actual threat at worst demonstrated by Trump’s threats to take Greenland, Ukraine’s accession became a near existential issue. Today Ukraine has the only military and society who are both capable and determined to stop Russian imperial ambitions. With Washington creating a defence vacuum, Kyiv became the only one that can fill that gap on the short to medium timeframe.
The Member State’s Concerns
With Orbán out of the picture many hoped that the EU barricades in font of Ukraine would be demolished, but it just highlighted the fact that many other capitals are weary of letting Kyiv join as well. They often cite that it would be unjust for other aspiring members that have been waiting for decades. Besides ethical concerns, the real obstacles are about economics and internal politics.
One of the most difficult issues is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Ukraine is called the “Breadbasket of Europe” for a reason. Under current rules its massive food production infrastructure would destabilize the EU’s agricultural subsidy system, causing major and potentially stinky political headaches in the member states capitals.
The CAP takes up nearly a third of the entire EU budget. If Ukraine were to join under the current framework, it would become the largest recipient of these funds. Current major beneficiaries like Poland, Spain, and Romania would transform into "net payers." As it became evident with the border blockades in Poland, cheap high-volume Ukrainian agricultural imports mobilise influential European farming lobbies, who wield massive leverage over their national governments.
Other than the CAP, the financial burden of integrating Ukraine would be staggering on EU Cohesion Funds designed to lift poorer member states up to the EU average. Given the destruction of Ukraine's infrastructure, factories, and energy grid, Kyiv would consume much of this capital for decades. To fund this, Western European countries would either have to significantly increase their contributions to the EU budget or accept severe cuts to domestic European infrastructure projects. With voters already fatigued by inflation and slow growth, this is a huge issue for leaders in Paris, Berlin, and other net contributors.
Then there is the giant elephant in the room, the veto system. The EU is already struggling with institutional paralysis with 27 members under the current rule of unanimity for foreign policy, taxation, and budgeting, designed for only 6 countries. Orbán’s ghost will hunt European capitals for years to come. There are deep anxieties about bringing in a politically volatile country with an ongoing battle against corruption.
Many states also view Ukrainian accession as a potential security risk. The EU treaty contains its own mutual defence clause, Article 42.7. Bringing a country into the bloc while parts of its territory is occupied by a nuclear-armed Russia raises an uneasy legal question: will the EU automatically find itself at war?
The EU’s Incentives
Integrating Ukraine is a geopolitical necessity to ensure the long-term survival of the European project.
The EU’s original raison d’être is to guarantee peace on the continent. The lesson from 2014 and 2022 is that strategic ambiguity doesn’t work, leaving aspiring members in a limbo invites conflict. Locking Ukraine into the EU’s legal, economic, and institutional framework as fast as possible is crucial to shrink Russia’s sphere of influence and deter future armed aggression. As an added factor, this deterrence only works with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and its unmatched defence sector.
Beyond immediate security considerations, the EU’s stated aim is to build strategic autonomy by derisking from China. Ukraine offers rich industrial and natural assets that the EU needs for the green and digital transitions. It holds massive reserves of lithium, titanium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. These are the raw materials needed for EV batteries and advanced electronics currently monopolized by China.
Not being able to integrate Ukraine would also deeply hurt the EU’s credibility on the world stage in a time when the old order is falling apart. The bloc spent half a decade providing hundreds of billions of Euros on aid, weapons, and based its entire foreign policy on promising Ukraine EU membership. If it started treating the country as one of the many aspiring members it cannot accept for decades, that would signal to Moscow, Beijing, and Washington that Brussels lacks the political will to follow through as a global actor.
Brussels’ Plans to Overcome the Obstacles
Ukraine’s accession is already de facto underway under a gradual integration model since 2022 February. Today Ukrainian citizens can practically work and travel freely in the EU, and use their mobile plans without roaming charges. The country is in the final stages to join SEPA, and is gradually gaining access to the EU Single Market.
What is likely to follow is Kyiv’s increasing participation in EU agencies and committees as an observer without voting rights, and incremental access to specific funds tied to strict rule-of-law benchmarks. This approach protects member states from an overnight budget nightmare, while giving Kyiv tangible integration milestone achievements.
Eventual however, full Ukrainian membership or any EU enlargement cannot happen without significant EU reform. The most important part of this will be either the scrapping, or - with typical EU fashion - the muddying of veto powers. The Commission, currently backed by France and Germany, is pushing to replace unanimity with Qualified Majority Voting in areas like foreign policy and sanctions. This, however, will inevitably put the Brussels in direct conflict with smaller member states.
To address Common Agricultural Policy and the Cohesion Funds issues, it will be interesting to see what the next EU budget for 2028–2034 will look like. Brussels intends to restructure CAP away from land-mass-based subsidies which would heavily favour Ukraine's giant corporate farms toward cap-limits, environmental outcomes, and small-farmer protections. This restructuring intends to be designed specifically to prevent Western European farmers from being wiped out by Ukrainian competition.
Keep your Friends Close, or you’ll be Forced to Keep your Enemies Closer
With Ukraine becoming a European military heavyweight - beyond the obvious benefits of the country’s integration - keeping it out of the bloc poses some much less discussed dangers.
With the newfound and tested powers Ukraine possesses, halting its EU integration process runs the risk of gradually alienating the country and its society, forcing it to increasingly go its own way.
Ukrainians already began viewing the EU as a slow, ineffective, and often unreliable entity they need less and less to survive. If this trajectory continues with diminishing hopes for EU integration with a population radicalised and brutalized by war, the risk of the emergence of a radical leader will increasingly become a real possibility.
This possibility and its military potential and determination could transform the country into something that looks like the combination of Turkey and Israel. A powerful state that follows its own rules, and not afraid to use political and military blackmail - or even force - to get what it wants, increasingly destabilizing Europe. Together with being under constant existential danger like Israel (or Prussia) would create a total wild card on the EU’s borders. It would run the risk of transforming Eastern Europe into the Middle East.
Ukraine needs serious reforms to become a full member, and they are highly incentivised and proven capable to work towards that goal. But simultaneously the EU needs to reform itself as well. Without the latter the former process might stop entirely, making the continent a more dangerous place for everyone.
