European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has recommended the EU open accession talks with Ukraine as soon as it meets the final conditions.
This comes as the European Commission published its latest enlargement report on where each aspiring new EU member, including Ukraine, stands. The report claimed that over the past few years, Ukraine has continued to progress on democratic and rule of law reforms, among other things.
"This report card is a sad joke. It reads like Orwellian doublespeak, which has no relation to reality whatsoever," Sleboda said.
He added that he wonders whether “those EU standards are really a pogrom against the largest church in the country," in an apparent reference to Kiev’s crackdown on the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
Sloboda also recalled that Ukrainian authorities have already banned 16 opposition parties, citing unnamed Kiev regime officials as saying that “corruption [in Ukraine] is out of control and everyone is stealing everything they can like there's no tomorrow.”
“On top of that, the Ukrainian border service issued a report last week that they have stopped 2,000 Ukrainian government officials from attempting to flee the country. They're stealing everything they can and trying to flee like rats on a sinking ship. But, you know, that is ‘progress’ on corruption,” the analyst sarcastically concluded.
Florian Philippot, leader of France’s Patriots party, has meanwhile expressed frustration over the European Commission’s move to begin negotiations on Ukraine entering the EU.
“Let’s yield our place to Ukraine and leave quickly!” he tweeted, describing the commission’s decision related to “one of the countries classified by all international organizations as one of the most corrupt in the world” as “monumental madness.”