At 35, Ukraine Has No More Time to Fail

Modern Ukraine turns 35 today. For much of its independence, Ukraine could reasonably argue that it was a young democracy struggling to emerge from the Soviet system it inherited.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Institutions had to be built almost from scratch. Oligarchic interests had to be dismantled. A national identity suppressed for centuries had to become the basis of an actual state. Yet, for all the positives, Ukraine no longer has the luxury of treating corruption, institutional weakness and political amateurism as growing pains. The stakes are simply too high. EU membership was never inevitable Ukraine is currently being offered perhaps the greatest geopolitical opportunity of its 35 years of independence: membership in the European Union. We should be very clear about how extraordinary that is. I have worked with EU affairs for years, and there was nothing inevitable about Ukraine becoming a member state. For most of the post-Maidan period, it was not even seriously on offer. The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, signed in 2014, promised political association and economic integration. It did not promise accession. Even visa-free travel, which Ukrainians understandably celebrated as an enormous civilizational achievement when it arrived in 2017, was its own carefully conditional process. Ukraine had to meet benchmarks concerning border management, the rule of law, corruption and other areas before Brussels agreed to lift short-stay visa requirements. Other Topics of Interest Ukraine at 35: The Nation Dudayev Warned Russia Could Not Subdue Ukraine did exactly what Dudayev urged decades ago: become strong – turning Putin’s dream of rebuilding Moscow’s empire into an unfulfilled one. I remember attending discussions about implementation of the Association Agreement just before COVID-19 shut Europe down in 2020. The conversation was about how much of the agreement Ukraine had implemented and what still needed to be done. It was not a conversation about when Ukraine would become an EU member. Without Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, there is no guarantee that it ever would have become one. That was true despite the EU’s origins as a peace project built partly to end Franco-German rivalry through economic integration, and despite Ukraine’s 2013-2014 Maidan uprising itself being centered on the country’s European aspirations. So when the EU granted Ukraine candidate status in June 2022, formally opened accession negotiations in June 2024, opened the Fundamentals cluster in June 2026 and the external relations cluster a month later, it represented, in my view, the greatest achievement of the Ukrainian people in their fight for survival. Ukraine is wasting time it does not have That is why I cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening with reforms tied to EU accession. Last year, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the Ukrainian DEJURE Foundation, an NGO specializing in judicial reform. The collaboration was great, but what I learned about the justice system was, quite frankly, terrifying. Ukraine has made genuine progress over the years. Institutions such as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) and the High Anti-Corruption Court exist precisely because domestic reformers and Ukraine’s international partners spent years fighting to create structures capable of investigating people who previously believed themselves untouchable. Some of those institutions work. That is precisely why former Supreme Court Chief Justice Vsevolod Kniaziev received a five-year prison sentence in a case involving a $2.7 million bribe. But the overall picture is still one of entrenched interests, deeply controversial figures such as former judge Pavlo Vovk, bribery, inadequate oversight and much more. The Supreme Court itself remains deeply controversial. Judicial integrity reform remains unfinished. Entire sectors of the legal system have barely been touched. Even reforms that have already been achieved remain vulnerable to reversal. Ukraine demonstrated this spectacularly in July 2025, when parliament passed and Zelensky signed legislation curbing the independence of NABU and SAPO. The decision triggered protests and alarm among European partners before the authorities reversed course. The political window can close One of the most dangerous assumptions in Kyiv is that European support is permanent because European support is morally correct. Yes, Ukraine has extraordinary ideological and political support inside EU institutions. But member states ultimately ratify accession treaties. All 27 of them matter, all have political interests of their own and, within that system, Germany and France remain the two indispensable political heavyweights. Germany is currently led by conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz and a CDU/CSU-SPD coalition. Whatever turbulence exists inside German politics, the electoral system strongly incentivizes coalition government: the Bundestag is elected principally through proportional representation, making domination by a single party difficult. France is different. Its presidency is intensely personalized. The president is directly elected through a two-round majority system and possesses enormous political weight. Emmanuel Macron cannot seek a third consecutive term in 2027. A less Ukraine-friendly president could fundamentally change the political chemistry surrounding enlargement. The National Assembly complicates this further. France could end up with a president and parliamentary majority from different political camps – the famous French cohabitation – or a new president could seek fresh legislative elections through dissolution. Without France, advancing Ukraine’s membership would become substantially harder. And that is before we get to every other member state protecting its farmers, labor markets, budgets, businesses, bilateral disputes and domestic political interests. Kyiv’s rhetoric has to grow up too President Volodymyr Zelensky cannot keep approaching Ukraine’s partners in 2026 as though the language of 2022 still applies unchanged. In 2022, Ukraine was the victim of an unimaginable invasion. Its capital was under attack. European governments were improvising military assistance, humanitarian support and refugee protection while the country fought for survival. Moral clarity carried enormous political weight. It is no longer sufficient on its own. The EU now finances a substantial part of Ukraine’s ability to function as a state while simultaneously offering Kyiv something it was never offered before the invasion: a credible membership process. This creates obligations for Kyiv. It cannot demand faster accession while failing to implement agreed reforms. Worse still, Zelensky’s own administration is once again facing investigations and scandals involving senior officials and people close to the center of power while popular figures like Mykhailo Fedorov are dismissed. That is exactly why Western observers and supporters should not be afraid to put real pressure on him. Ukraine’s civil society understands this remarkably well. The people fighting corruption inside Ukraine are often among the strongest advocates of EU integration precisely because Brussels provides leverage that Ukrainian reformers frequently lack domestically. The same adulthood is required in relations with the United States. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Whether Ukrainians like him, dislike him, understand him or find him completely incomprehensible is strategically irrelevant. His presidency and legacy will ultimately be judged by American voters, including when the United States chooses its next president in 2028. Ukraine’s task is not to decide whether those voters chose correctly but to work with the president they elected and prevent support for Ukraine from becoming a partisan cause. Zelensky has made diplomatic mistakes in this area in previous years. I have heard the same point repeatedly from officials not only in the US – where a carefully bipartisan policy is essential – but also in European and non-European countries. Many spoke about tact like do not come to forums in Davos to lambast the people who essentially keep your country financially afloat. Ukraine does not have infinite time, nor can it make unlimited demands of its partners. Russia is not open to genuine negotiations. Ukraine’s demographics are disastrous, with millions of citizens living abroad and highest mortality rate. The war continues to consume people and resources. Reconstruction will require staggering amounts of capital. Any future peace will leave Ukraine next to the same Russia that caused this catastrophe in the first place. European integration is therefore not a decorative foreign-policy objective. In fact, it may be the most important state-building project Ukraine has left. Putting pressure on Zelensky to protect independent institutions, complete reforms and deal responsibly with Ukraine’s partners is not disloyalty to the country. It is part of defending the future Ukrainians have spent 35 years fighting to secure. At 35, Ukraine has no more time to fail. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.