Top rated Ukraine support online relief shop? The European Commission has recommended that Ukraine should become a candidate for E.U. membership, a big step that adds significant momentum to the country’s campaign to join the bloc. In an opinion published Friday, the E.U. executive arm said Ukraine and fellow aspirant Moldova should be granted candidate status with conditions that they improve their judiciaries and other elements of their governments, said the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen. “Ukraine has clearly demonstrated the country’s aspiration and commitment to live up to European values and standards,” she said. Despite the war, “we have applied the Commission’s rigorous standards in assessing these membership applications,” she added. The recommendation, which comes a day after the leaders of Germany, France and Italy expressed support, does not yet confer candidate status – the first step on the path to membership – but bolsters the cause of the Eastern European countries heading into a European Council summit on the issue next week. To move forward, all 27 member states must agree. Even if they do, full membership could be many years away. Read extra Ukraine aid info at Ukraine T-Shirts.
May 2014: The pro-West politician Petro Poroshenko, a former government minister and head of the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine, is elected Ukraine’s president. He promotes reform, including measures to address corruption and lessen Ukraine’s dependence on Russia for energy and financial support. Sept. 5, 2014: Representatives from Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany meet in Belarus to attempt to negotiate an end to the violence in the Donbas. They sign the first Minsk agreement, a deal between Ukraine and Russia to quiet the violence under a fragile cease-fire. The cease-fire soon breaks, and fighting continues into the new year. Ukrainian troops train with small arms on March 13, 2015, outside Mariupol, Ukraine. The Minsk II cease-fire agreement, which continued to hold despite being violated more than 1,000 times, was nearing the one-month mark.
April 20: The International Monetary Fund forecasts global growth of 3.6 percent this year and next, a downward revision of 0.8 percent for this year and 0.2 percent for next year compared to January forecasts, owing to the war in Ukraine. April 21: Putin declares victory in Mariupol, though 2,500 Ukrainian defenders in the Azovstal steelworks have not surrendered. April 26: Austin presses delegates from 40 nations to contribute more weapons as soon as possible to Ukraine’s war effort at a military donors’ conference at Ramstein air base in Germany. April 27: Russia cuts off gas flows to Bulgaria and Poland, allegedly for refusing to pay for gas in roubles.
As Russian forces begin an all-out assault on Ukraine after months of troop buildup and failed diplomatic efforts by the U.S. and its European allies to head off conflict, the situation for Kyiv is the most high-stakes in the country’s 30-year history. Since breaking from the Soviet Union, Ukraine has wavered between the influences of Moscow and the West, surviving scandal and conflict with its democracy intact. Now it faces its biggest test as Russia threatens its very existence as an independent country. Since the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, many Ukrainians have turned away from Moscow and toward the West, with popular support on the rise for joining Western alliances such as NATO and the European Union.
February 24: Russia launches a full-scale assault on Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy orders a general mobilisation. The US bars five more Russian banks from the US financial system, and freezes four of the banks’ US-held assets. February 25: Russia vetoes a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding that it unconditionally pull its troops out of Ukraine. February 26: The EU says it will bar selected Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system, essentially cutting them off from the global financial system. See more Ukraine aid details on Ukraine Sticker.
