Ukraine EU accession by 2027 dismissed as unrealistic as peace talks intensify

A senior American official told the news agency on Friday that Ukraine could enter the European Union as early as January 2027 under a new US plan designed to end the war with Russia. The timeline is ambitious—perhaps impossibly so. The EU's accession process typically consumes years and demands unanimous approval from all 27 member states, a threshold that has proven difficult to clear. Hungary, in particular, has repeatedly blocked Ukraine's path. "It's stated there but it's a matter for negotiation, and the Americans support it," the official said, speaking without attribution.

Brussels reacted with open skepticism. EU diplomats and officials dismissed the 2027 target as fantasy. "2027, it's tomorrow," one EU official remarked, gesturing at the glacial pace of European decision-making. Another diplomat was blunter: "As if the Americans are going to decide for us. It's nonsense: there needs to be an appetite for enlargement that isn't there." The gap between Washington's timeline and European reality had become impossible to ignore.

Meanwhile, the diplomatic machinery was grinding forward. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was scheduled to arrive in Berlin on Monday for talks on bilateral relations and the war itself. Germany's Friedrich Merz would host him alongside numerous European heads of state and senior representatives from the EU and NATO. The Wall Street Journal reported that US envoy Steve Witkoff would also be in Berlin over the weekend, meeting with counterparts from Britain, France, and Germany on Sunday and Monday.

But the talks were shadowed by fundamental disagreements. Europeans and Ukrainians were demanding that the United States and its allies provide explicit security guarantees before any territorial negotiations over Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine could proceed. "We need full visibility on the security guarantees that Europeans and Americans can give to Ukrainians before any settlement on contentious territorial issues," the French presidency said ahead of the Berlin meeting. Kyiv was under pressure from the White House to reach a quick peace settlement, yet was pushing back against what many viewed as a US-backed plan that favored Moscow.

On the financial front, the EU took action on Friday to indefinitely freeze 210 billion euros in Russian central bank assets held across Europe. EU Council President António Costa confirmed that leaders had delivered on an October commitment to "keep Russian assets immobilised until Russia ends its war of aggression against Ukraine and compensates for the damage caused." The decision came hours after Russia's central bank announced it was suing Euroclear, the Brussels-based securities depository holding the frozen funds, in a Moscow court. Euroclear said it was already defending against more than 100 legal claims filed in Russia.

Russia escalated its retaliation in other ways. A Moscow court sentenced top International Criminal Court judges and the court's chief prosecutor to prison terms in absentia, responding to the ICC's arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over the war. Prosecutor Karim Khan received a 15-year sentence, while eight ICC staff members, including former court president Piotr Hofmanski, were sentenced to terms ranging from 3.5 to 15 years. The court claimed the ICC had "unlawfully prosecuted Russian citizens" and issued "patently unlawful arrest warrants."

On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces reported retaking parts of the northeastern town of Kupiansk and encircling Russian troops there. Zelenskyy visited the area and praised the operation. Russia countered that it was advancing on all fronts and had seized both Kupiansk and the strategic city of Pokrovsk in the east—claims Kyiv denied, insisting fighting was ongoing. Ukrainian drones struck two Russian oil rigs in the Caspian Sea on Friday, hitting the Filanovsky and Korchagin platforms, both operated by Lukoil. The Filanovsky rig, part of Russia's largest Caspian oilfield, had come under attack earlier in the week.

Russia attacked two Ukrainian ports on Friday, damaging three Turkish-owned vessels, including one carrying food supplies. The strikes came hours after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had told Putin that a limited ceasefire covering energy facilities and ports might be mutually beneficial. Meanwhile, Donald Trump said on Friday that a contentious US-proposed free economic zone in Ukrainian-controlled parts of the eastern Donbas would work, offering no further explanation. Zelenskyy had questioned the proposal the day before, asking who would govern such a territory and warning that without solid guarantees Russian troops would not simply seize it after a Ukrainian withdrawal, the plan was unfair.