Ukraine’s aspiration to join the EU will be one of the priorities of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Saturday on a visit to Kyiv.
“Spain reaffirms its commitment to work with Ukraine as it makes progress in meeting the conditions in its EU accession,” according to a joint statement by Sánchez and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued on Saturday.
Sánchez arrived in Kyiv on Saturday morning to meet the Ukrainian leader for what was meant to be a highly symbolic visit, taking place as Spain officially takes over the reins of the presidency of the Council for the next six months.
“The war in Ukraine will be one of the great priorities of our presidency, with the focus being on guaranteeing the unity among all member states,” Sánchez said at Friday’s European Council in Brussels.
It’s yet to be seen, however, whether Sánchez will remain in power after elections scheduled for July 23, with recent polls released by El Mundo newspaper showing that Spain’s conservative People’s Party (PP) is improving its chances to control the lower house of the parliament.
According to the latest poll, the PP could get up to 143 seats of the 350-member lower house, while Sánchez’s Socialist Workers’ Party is expected to get up to 105 seats. With the PP likely to form an alliance with far-right Vox, the poll predicts the right-wing coalition to be on track to score an absolute majority, which would require a minimum of 176 seats.
Separately, several media outlets reported that U.S. CIA Director William Burns traveled to Ukraine last month and met with President Zelenskyy and Ukrainian intelligence officials. The Ukrainian officials revealed a strategy to retake Russian-occupied territory and open cease-fire negotiations with Moscow by the end of the year, the Washington Post reported, citing officials familiar with the visit.
Zelenskyy stressed during Sanchez’s visit on Saturday that Ukraine will only seek to negotiate a peace deal once Russia has pulled its forces out of Donbas and Crimea.
“The borders of February 24, 2022, are not our borders,” Zelenskyy said, according to a report in the Telegraph. “That was the contact line between us and the occupiers,” he said.
“Ukraine will be ready for one or another format of diplomacy when we are really on our borders — on our real borders in accordance with international law,” Zelenskyy said.
The the CIA chief’s secret trip to Kyiv occurred before Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner rebellion, which was not a topic of discussion, according to the reports. On Saturday, Burns said that the aborted mutiny by mercenary leader was a challenge to the Russian state that had shown the “corrosive effect” of President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
At a press conference in Kyiv with the Spanish leader, Zelenskyy also warned that a “serious threat” remained at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, according to a Reuters report. “There is a serious threat because Russia is technically ready to provoke a local explosion at the station, which could lead to a [radiation] release,” Zelenskyy said, citing Ukrainian intelligence information.
The Ukrainian president, meanwhile, imposed 10-year-long sanctions on nearly 200 individuals — mostly Russians — and 291 businesses, Russian news agency TASS reported Saturday. Sanctions against legal entities targeted not only Russian, but also Belarusian, Georgian and Kazakh companies accused of either maintaining or restoring ties with Moscow.
