Ukraine Could Join The EU Within Weeks – Ursula Von Der Leyen Vows To Accelerate Kyiv’s Bid After Visiting Volodymyr Zelensky And Seeing Bucha War Crimes

Ukraine could become an official member of the European Union within weeks not years, it was revealed tonight, as Brussels chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed to accelerate the wartorn country’s ascension to the bloc in the wake of Russia’s invasion.

The European Commission President symbolically handed Volodymyr Zelensky an official membership questionnaire at an historic joint press conference in Kyiv, in a move likely to infuriate Vladimir Putin and his inner circle.

Becoming an EU member state normally takes years, and the process involves several rounds of applications, criteria checks and negotiations.

Kyiv has long aspired to join the European bloc, with the country’s foreign minister pointedly using Ukraine’s 2021 independence day to tell Politico that Brussels must welcome Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine into the European Union.

However, Ukraine’s desire to become an official member state fuelled the Maidan revolution in 2014 which led to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. Ukraine already belongs to the EU’s Eastern Partnership and European Neighbourhood Policy.

Von der Leyen’s public appearance was the EU’s latest attempt to offer Kyiv both moral and financial support after Zelensky declared Russia’s invasion was a direct attack not only on Ukraine’s existence, but the security of Europe as a whole.

‘It will not as usual be a matter of years to form this opinion but I think a matter of weeks,’ she told the Kyiv press conference. The President also reiterated the West’s policy of support for Ukraine, vowing that Putin ‘must fail’ after the EU unveiled its further sanctions on Russia.

Earlier on Friday, the Brussels chief visited Bucha, where Russian forces have allegedly committed mass murder and rape. Since Russian troops pulled back from the town, Ukrainian officials say hundreds of dead civilians have been found there. Visiting the town on Friday, Von der Leyen said she had witnessed the ‘unthinkable’.

Referring to a deadly attack at Kramatorsk railway station earlier in the day, in which dozens of refugees including children were killed, she told the Kyiv news conference: ‘The cynical behaviour has almost no benchmark anymore… It is unbelievable.’

The mass killing of civilians in Bucha, near Kyiv, have been widely condemned by the West as war crimes with piles of bodies showing signs of torture and execution pictured after it had been recaptured by Ukrainian forces.

But officials have now revealed that even greater damage was done by Putin’s thugs in Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv and about 15 miles from Bucha.

The are ‘significantly more dreadful’ than the scenes in Bucha, with residents left to die in the rubble of their bombed homes for a week, President Zelensky said last night.

Von der Leyen travelled to the war-ravaged town after a senior official admitted that nation states had paid Vladimir Putin €35 billion for oil and gas since he ordered Moscow’s troops into Ukraine on February 24.

She was was joined in Bucha by the EU’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell who this week admitted the bloc is paying a billion euros a day for energy provisions.

He said that banning oil imports from Russia would be discussed when EU foreign ministers meet on Monday. But today the bloc rowed back, with a diplomat saying an embargo would not be discussed at the conference in Luxembourg.

It comes as a deadly railway station strike that killed dozens of fleeing civilians in Kramatorsk was branded a ‘crime against humanity’ within the international community.

Graphic images on Friday from the eastern Ukrainian city showed bodies strewn across the floor, lying amongst luggage and children’s prams outside the city’s busy station – alongside the remains of a Tochka-U missile with the words ‘For (our) Children) scribbled on its casing.

Referring to that message, EU executive head Ursula von der Leyen told a Kyiv news conference: ‘The cynical behaviour has almost no benchmark anymore… It is unbelievable.’.

Ukrainian officials say Russia’s military is regrouping after withdrawing eastwards from the zone around Kyiv, where a forensics team on Friday began exhuming a mass grave in the town of Bucha.

The grave’s discovery last week galvanised the West into toughening sanctions against Russia and speeding up arms deliveries to Ukraine.

Since Russian troops pulled back from Bucha, Ukrainian officials say hundreds of dead civilians have been found there. Visiting the town on Friday, von der Leyen said it had witnessed the ‘unthinkable’.

Photo Credit: Getty