Ukraine expects EU-wide support for candidacy to join bloc

A Ukrainian deputy prime minister overseeing the country’s push to join the European Union said Wednesday that she’s “100%” certain all 27 EU nations will approve of making Ukraine a candidate for membership in the bloc during a summit this week.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna said the decision could come as soon as Thursday, on the first day of the two-day EU leaders summit in Brussels.

Asked how confident she was that Ukraine would be accepted as an EU candidate, she said: “The day before the summit starts, I can say 100%.”

Countries that had been skeptical – Stefanishyna cited the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark – about starting accession talks with Ukraine while it is fighting Russia’s invasion are now supportive, she said.

The EU’s executive arm threw its weight behind Ukraine’s candidacy last week. Stefanishyna described that decision as “a game-changer” and said unanimous support from the European Commission had cut ground from under “the legs of those most hesitating — not even skeptic — but hesitating countries.”

“Most of the EU leaders have explained that there is a consensus already, so there’s no like, no discussion about the consensus on Ukraine,” she told The AP.

In other developments:

— Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said a Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier accompanying him appear to have been “coldly executed” during the first weeks of the war in Ukraine as they searched in Russian-occupied woods for a missing camera drone. The group sent investigators to the woods north of the capital, Kyiv, where the bodies of Maks Levin and serviceman Oleksiy Chernyshov were found April 1. The group said its team counted 14 bullet holes in the burned hulk of the pair’s car and found litter seemingly left by Russian soldiers.

—Russian forces have captured three villages in the heavily contested eastern region of Ukraine, a local official said. Gov. Serhiy Haidai told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the villages are a few miles from the city of Lysychansk, the last city in the area still fully under Ukrainian control. The Russians have also taken a strategic coal village, Toshkivka, enabling them to intensify attacks, Haidai said.

—Russian officials said a drone strike caused a fire at an oil processing plant in southwestern Russia on Wednesday. The blaze engulfed a piece of machinery at the Novoshakhtinsk plant in the Rostov-on-Don region. Authorities said that dozens of firefighters quickly contained the fire and no one was hurt. The plant said in a statement that the fire was caused by a strike carried out by two drones, describing it as a “terrorist” act. It didn’t give details, but the state news agency Tass reported that two Ukrainian drones flew over the plant and one slammed into a heat exchanger, triggering the fire. Ukrainian authorities have not confirmed the strike.

—Turkey’s defense ministry said Wednesday that a Turkish ship was allowed to leave the Russian-occupied Azov Sea port of Mariupol following talks between Turkish and Russian defense ministry officials. A ministry statement said the Turkish freighter, Azov Concord, was the first foreign ship to be allowed to leave Mariupol. The ministry did not say what the freighter was carrying. The war has halted critical grain exports by sea. Turkish and Russian military delegations met in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss a possible deal for the shipment of Ukraine’s grain through the Black Sea.

—French armed forces conducted a surprise military exercise in Estonia, deploying more than 100 paratroopers in the Baltic country that neighbors Russia, the French defense ministry said Wednesday. The airborne operation, dubbed “Thunder Lynx,” enabled, at short notice, the dropping of about 100 French paratroopers “over an area secured by Estonian soldiers,” the statement said. The exercise in Estonia, a NATO ally, was executed as an act of “strategic solidarity” amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.