Zelensky: Russia is targeting a “vast area from Warsaw to Sofia”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday called on the European Union to allow his country to begin the road to joining the European bloc and warned that Russia’s territorial ambitions stretch from Warsaw to Sofia, Reuters reports.

Zelenski called for more sanctions against Russia in a video conference he held in the Czech parliament. “Russia is not only interested in our cities in Mariupol, Severodonetsk, Kharkov and Kyiv. No, his ambitions are directed to a vast area from Warsaw to Sofia.”

“As in the past, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the first step that Russia’s leadership needs to open its way to other countries, to the conquest of other peoples,” Zelensky told Czech lawmakers.

The EU has already adopted six packages of sanctions against Russia, and Zelensky would like Moscow to be the target of a new series of sanctions aimed at forcing it to end the war it has launched in Ukraine.

The European Commission is expected to announce this week its decision on Ukraine’s application for candidate status, ahead of next week’s EU summit. Obtaining candidate status is the preliminary step in the long accession process. “Giving Ukraine the status of a candidate now means proving that European unification is real and that Europe’s values ​​really work and are not just mentioned in certain documents,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian president also said that the Czech people, after suffering under the occupation of Nazi Germany during World War II and decades of Soviet rule after the end of the war, know what a compromise entails and what happens when concessions are made in the face of tyranny. “The person who wants to conquer everything will never be content to take only part of what he wants,” Zelensky warned.