Insists on the status of a candidate for Ukraine and asks to start reconstruction now

BRUSSELS, 30 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The president of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, has made the Twenty-seven ugly for their slowness in approving the sixth package of sanctions against Russia, which includes the oil embargo, urging them to maintain unity and put aside their divisions since it must be the EU that puts pressure on Moscow and not the other way around.

Zelensky has intervened for the third time by videoconference in the European Council to maintain his pressure on European leaders, to whom he has reproached that since the approval of the fifth package of sanctions, 52 days have already passed during which more children have died – there are already 243– and Russian missile attacks have continued.

The blame for all this, he stated, does not lie with the European countries but with Russia, while making it clear that in the search for peace “there can be no compromises at the expense of the sovereignty and integrity” of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president lamented that there is still no agreement on the sixth package, at which point he stressed that it should be Russia that depended on Europe and not the other way around, recalling that Moscow still earns almost 1,000 million euros a day selling its energy, among other things.

Thus, Zelensky has urged European leaders to maintain unity, because what Russia wants is for the EU “to be 27 fragments that cannot be put together.” The president has argued that the time has come to “not be fragments but a whole.”

“All internal disputes in Europe must end,” he defended, stressing that “they only encourage Russia to exert more and more pressure” on Europeans, mainly in the energy field but now also in food.

For this reason, he has asked them to approve the sixth package of sanctions, including the embargo on Russian crude oil, and also to immediately seek a solution to prevent a food crisis from occurring.

At this point, the Ukrainian president has welcomed the efforts to create safe corridors that allow Ukraine to get its agricultural exports, but has stressed that the best guarantee would be the end of the war.

“Because there can be no peaceful trade, no safe agricultural production, if Russia retains the ability to intercept ships with Ukrainian agricultural products” and continues to maintain its ability to attack Ukraine’s cities, ports and infrastructure.

On the other hand, he took the opportunity once again to defend that Ukraine should receive the status of EU candidate at the leaders’ summit in June, rejecting “any attempt to find an alternative” to this issue, in an apparent allusion to the proposal of the French President Emmanuel Macron to create a “political community” with European countries outside the bloc.

The president has also called for more financial and military support for his country, warning that “European stability” depends on the stability of Ukraine. In this sense, he has argued that the confiscated Russian assets can be used to rebuild his country and as compensation for the damage caused by the war.

Thus, he has indicated that kyiv is already preparing a Recovery Plan and has opted for the reconstruction to begin even though the conflict has not yet ended.

Zelensky’s intervention, which has also called for Russia to be considered a sponsor of terrorism, has lasted for about ten minutes and, unlike the one in March, has not been directed against any leader in particular, but rather his message has been for everyone. So, he was particularly critical of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, who is precisely now preventing the agreement to veto Russian oil.

After his words, there has been no exchange with the European leaders, but instead they have begun their debate on Ukraine and the issues related to this conflict on the European Council’s agenda without him, alone and without mobile devices for reasons of confidentiality .