Poland’s newly elected prime minister Donald Tusk condemned “apathy on Ukraine,” announcing he would mobilise support for Kyiv ahead of the EU leaders’ summit starting on Wednesday.
Apathy on Ukraine is unacceptable.
Tusk claimed he would try to persuade “some member states” to continue supporting Ukraine despite Western fatigue over the protracted military conflict. He declared that he would “loudly and decisively demand the full mobilisation of the free world, the Western world, to help Ukraine in this war.”
At the summit, EU members will confront Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has vowed to veto Ukraine’s bid to join the bloc. He is also likely to suspend 50 billion euros in financial aid to Kyiv, a blow to Zelensky, who has travelled to Washington to persuade the US to keep backing the war-torn country.
Congress is actively opposing Biden’s attempts to allocate a new financial aid package as it fears that US taxpayers’ money is being spent not on military needs but on enriching Ukraine’s top officials, recently accused in major corruption scandals.
Orbán is the only leader among the 27 EU countries that is obstructing accession talks. The EU needs the unanimous support of all its leaders to launch membership talks, which, according to the Hungarian PM, is not the right move for Ukraine.
EU officials and diplomats also suspect Orbán of using the corruption allegations against Ukrainian leaders as a bargaining chip to obtain funds frozen by the EU over concerns regarding the rule of law in Hungary, according to Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo.
We’re not in a Hungarian bazaar where we can exchange one thing for another. Ukraine is a country that wants to respect democratic values… Maybe a lesson for Orban himself.
The corruption issue was a taboo during the first year of the war, but after Zelensky announced the replacement of Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov, the issue was elevated at the highest level of Ukrainian politics.
