Mat Whatley
Mat Whatley is a former U.K. army officer, who was head of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Donetsk, Ukraine, and a senior manager with the EU Monitoring Mission to Georgia in the Caucasus. He’s the managing director at Okapi Train.
U.S. President Donald Trump has forced a binary choice on Ukraine’s supporters.
His aggressive push to end the war, at the cost of major Ukrainian concessions, has fueled instability in Kyiv. And in response, Europe has hardened its support, spurring unrealistic policymaking that leaves little room for nuance in the gulf between Brussels and the White House.
As a result, many within the bloc are now calling for Ukraine’s accession to be radically fast-tracked, following the European Council’s 2022 decision to grant it candidate status. Moreover, anyone who subjects these promises to even the mildest scrutiny now risks being accused of failing to take Russia’s aggression seriously, or even of aiding Moscow.
However, admitting Ukraine into the EU presents an immense challenge — one that would fully reshape the bloc’s budgetary structure and risk unity, given the country would immediately become the largest recipient of EU funds.
These concerns were widespread within the bloc’s establishment not that long ago. It was in 2023 that former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker remarked Ukraine wasn’t ready for accession due to rule-of-law and corruption challenges, saying: “Anyone who has had anything to do with Ukraine knows that this is a country that is corrupt at all levels of society.”
And despite much reform, this problem stubbornly persists. A 2024 poll by the country’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention found that 90 percent of Ukrainians believe corruption is still widespread, with most saying it’s getting worse. More Ukrainians now view corruption as a greater threat than Russia’s military aggression.
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