Hannah Lucinda Smith: Ukraine shouldn’t count on EU membership
Brussels must solve the bloc’s internal problems and stop making promises it cannot keep
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Narrated by Hannah Lucinda Smith
As a comic actor, Volodymyr Zelensky foreshadowed the moment when the European Union would welcome Ukraine. Vasiliy Petrovich Goloborodko, his character in Servant of the People, a sitcom about a teacher who becomes president, answers the phone to Angela Merkel, who tells him Ukraine has been accepted into the club. Goloborodko gets a few moments of celebration before he realises there has been a mix-up: it is Montenegro, not Ukraine, that has been granted membership.
Ukraine’s real-life path into the EU is already longer and more complex than the skit suggests — and could yet prove as frustrating and disappointing. It has been inching towards the bloc since the end of the Cold War, but an association agreement set to be signed in 2013