Zelenskyy wants admission before 2030, but with a growing far-right, anti-enlargement contingent and budgetary fears mounting, some countries are hiding behind a Hungarian veto

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy may be a wartime leader, but he is fighting to deliver peacetime ambitions, too: he wants Ukraine to become an EU country – soon.

Ukraine’s tireless president is ramping up pressure on EU governments to accelerate the slow process of joining: he sees the collective sacrifice of his people as a struggle “for the Ukrainian future, the future of Ukraine in the European Union”.