KIEV, November 25. /TASS/. Over 90% of Ukrainians are ready to live without electricity and heat for years if they see the prospect of EU membership, Elena Zelenskaya, the wife of the Ukrainian president, said.
She cited a a recent poll where 90% of Ukrainians said they were ready to live with electricity shortages for two to three years if they could see the prospect of joining the European Union. "You know, it is easy to run a marathon when you know how many kilometres there are," she told the BBC, according to the excerpts of her upcoming interview published on Friday. Zelenskaya did not specify who conducted the survey or how many people took part in it.
On Wednesday, an air alert was declared throughout Ukraine, it lasted for more than two hours. There were reports of explosions and damage to infrastructure in Kiev, Lvov, Kharkov, Odessa, Dnepr, Nikolayev and other cities. The vast majority of Ukrainian residents were left without electricity. All three Kiev-controlled nuclear power plants in Khmelnitsky, South Ukraine, and Rovne were urgently disconnected from the power grid. Outages also affected most thermal and hydro power plants, while some electricity grid facilities sustained damage.
On February 28, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed Ukraine's application for accession to the European Union. The EU heads of state and government at a summit in Brussels on June 23 approved granting Ukraine and Moldova the status of candidates for accession to the union. The countries need to fulfill a number of conditions, including reforms, to start accession negotiations. Earlier, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stressed that to start accession negotiations, Ukraine needed to strengthen the judicial system and fight against corruption, to carry out de-oligarchization and a number of other reforms. The process of negotiating the terms of the country's admission to the community can take an indefinitely long period, and candidate status does not guarantee accession to the EU.
On November 21, Zelensky once again called on Western countries to admit Ukraine to NATO and the EU.