Burc Eruygur<\/p>\n
21 April 2026\u2022Update: 21 April 2026<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday the EU could become a \u201cmuch stronger\u201d bloc with the inclusion of Ukraine, Norway, the UK and T\u00fcrkiye.<\/p>\n
Speaking during an interview with Ukraine\u2019s national telethon United News, an excerpt of which he shared on US social media company X, Zelenskyy reaffirmed Kyiv\u2019s desire to become a member of the EU.<\/p>\n
Expressing confidence in Ukraine\u2019s accession \u201cif some representatives of the EU do not make mistakes,\u201d Zelenskyy said the country is already strengthening the bloc, particularly from a security perspective, adding that security is currently \u201ca priority for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA union that could be much stronger \u2013 I believe this would be a union of such countries as Norway, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and T\u00fcrkiye. These are four countries that the European Union is lacking,\u201d Zelenskyy said.<\/p>\n
Stating that the UK previously left the EU and that Norway maintains different forms of cooperation and economic ties with the 27-member bloc, Zelenskyy said he believes these four countries would make the EU the \u201cstrongest union in the world, with the best security in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not seeking an alternative. I simply believe that these four countries are very strong and would make the European Union stronger. And even these four countries on their own would certainly form a very strong union,\u201d Zelenskyy added.<\/p>\n
Kyiv formally applied for EU membership shortly after the start of the Russian war on Ukraine in February 2022 and was granted candidate status later that year.<\/p>\n
The European Council decided to open accession talks with Ukraine in December 2023, and the first intergovernmental conference marking the start of accession negotiations was held in June 2024.<\/p>\n
Ukraine completed the screening phase of the accession process in September 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Burc Eruygur 21 April 2026\u2022Update: 21 April 2026 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday the EU could become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,180755,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-543155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-sitekeywords","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}