Poroshenko: Ukrainian membership in EU is not ‘a prospect for 2018’
While acknowledging Ukraine’s memberships in the European Union and the NATO remain the country’s strategic priorities, these are “prospects obviously not to be fulfilled in 2018,” the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, wrote in an article for the publications Novoye Vremya and The Economist Mir.
In the op-ed published under the title The Word and Development the President of Ukraine outlined his vision of the “only possible path of development for a successful country.”
“Membership in the European Union and the NATO are, undoubtedly, our strategic goals. However, prospects for fulfillment of those goals obviously will not come in 2018, for, as the Bible says, there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven, and I am confident that this time will come,” the President wrote.
Drawing a bottom line under the year that has passed, Poroshenko credited as one of the achievements the visa-free travel for Ukrainians with the European Union, saying the event “has finalized the completion of a post-Soviet period and our irreversibly cutting ties with the empire.”
In the article Poroshenko called the European Union “the most prestigious union in the world” and stressed that Ukraine made a leap towards it as it signed an Association Agreement with the EU that in its essence is a roadmap for further fundamental changes in the country.
In early December, Poroshenko announced national referendums for joining NATO and EU and predicted that they will turn out favorably.