World

Ukraine edges closer to European Union membership after decade of war

Published

2 years ago

June 24, 2024

Ukraine edges closer to European Union membership after decade of war

Ukraine, through its ongoing war with Russia and extensive reforms, is nearing its long-held aspiration of European Union membership.
The launch of talks is an important step for a nation that has pushed through the reforms required in its pursuit of EU membership.
Kyiv filed its request to join the EU days after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

A veteran of Ukraine’s 2014 revolution who is now fighting Russian forces, Yehor Sobolev knows the price of Kyiv’s decade-long drive to join the European Union as well as anyone.

Having backed tough reforms as a lawmaker after the pro-democracy uprising 10 years ago, he says he will look on proudly from the front as formal accession talks open on Tuesday.

“We Ukrainians know how to fulfil our dreams,” said the 47-year-old deputy commander of a special army unit.

RUSSIA BLAMES US AFTER UKRAINIAN ATTACK ON CRIMEA LEAVES SEVERAL DEAD, WOUNDED

The launch of talks, though largely ceremonial, is an important step for a nation that has spilled blood and pushed through the reforms required in its pursuit of EU membership.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sign a Ukrainian national flag in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 2, 2023. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS/files)

“Ukraine is returning to Europe, where it has belonged for centuries, as a full-fledged member of the European community,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday.

Kyiv filed its request to join the EU days after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It sees membership as validation of its fight to embrace European values.

It now faces a lengthy path to accession, and needs to overhaul a bureaucracy still riddled with vestiges of Soviet days.

KYIV’S FORCES ARE UP AGAINST A CONCERTED RUSSIAN PUSH IN EASTERN UKRAINE, A MILITARY OFFICIAL SAYS

The task will be complicated by the war with Russia that has no end in sight, with Ukrainian towns and cities under constant threat of Russian air strikes that have killed many civilians as well as soldiers, forced millions from their homes and damaged critical and energy infrastructure.

In many ways, Sobolev’s story is a picture of Ukraine’s trajectory over the past decade.

He was a prominent figure in the Maidan revolution that toppled a Russia-backed leader after protests triggered by him breaking a promise to develop closer ties with the EU.

Sobolev later worked on legislation that formed the foundation of Ukraine’s anti-corruption infrastructure, central to securing financial aid and backing for Kyiv’s integration with the EU.

He also co-authored a law aimed at erasing traces of Ukraine’s Soviet legacy and Russian influence by paving the way for the renaming of thousands of streets, towns and cities, and the removal of monuments.

In 2021, Sobolev donned a uniform and rose from a rank-and-file Ukrainian soldier to officer, as Russia broadened a war that Kyiv says began in 2014 after Moscow seized the Crimea peninsula and fuelled an insurgency in the east.

“The top corrupt officials that we dealt with on the Maidan are the same kinds of leaders of the ‘Russian world’ like (President Vladimir) Putin,” he said.

“So for me it’s one war.”

LONG ROAD AHEAD

The accession talks are expected to start at a ministerial meeting in Luxembourg on Tuesday, days before Hungary, which has closer ties to Russia than other member states, takes over the EU’s six-month rotating presidency.

Ukraine cleared initial hurdles to accession in December by showing progress in fighting corruption and rebuilding its judiciary, among other areas the EU considers fundamental.

Now it must map out a more detailed plan to achieve lasting results that will be measured by a range of benchmarks, said Leonid Litra of the New Europe Centre, a think tank in Kyiv.

It will later move on to fields ranging from agriculture and taxation to tackling climate change.

“If you want to have a merit-based and predictable process, you need to get a very clear to-do list,” he said.

Sobolev, a father of four, knows the road ahead will not be easy, citing old mentalities that are still firmly rooted in some parts of government.

But Ukrainians are likely become “much more serious students” of good governance as the prospect of joining the 27-nation bloc comes closer into focus, he said.

“In this sense, war forces a society to grow up,” he said.

World

Supreme Court rejects Virginia’s bid to restore congressional map favoring Democrats

Published

1 hour ago

May 16, 2026

Press Room

Supreme Court rejects Virginia’s bid to restore congressional map favoring Democrats

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.

The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.

In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.

But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.

The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.

The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.

Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.

That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision.

The state’s attorney general, Democrat Jay Jones, slammed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, saying it was another example of what he described as a national attack on voting rights and the rule of law.

“Let’s be clear about what is happening. Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump’s political gain,” Jones said in a statement issued late Friday night.

The state’s top Democrats had disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.

A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.

Spanberger reacted to Friday’s decision by saying both courts had nullified the votes of the more than 3 million Virginians who cast ballots in the April 21 special election.

“These Virginians made their voices heard — casting their ballots in good faith to push back against a President who said he’s ‘entitled’ to more seats in Congress before voters go to the polls,” she posted on her X account.

The leader of the state Republican Party said the justices made the right call.

“Wisely, the Supreme Court of the United States has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” state party chairman Jeff Ryer said. “This should once and for all put to rest the Democrats’ effort to disenfranchise half of Virginia.

___

Associated Press writer Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.

World

Trump says Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, killed in US-Nigerian operation

Published

2 hours ago

May 16, 2026

Press Room

Trump says Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, killed in US-Nigerian operation

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President Donald Trump announced late Friday that U.S. and Nigerian forces carried out an operation that killed a global ISIS leader.

Trump identified the terrorist as Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, whom he described as ISIS’s second-in-command globally.

“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

“Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump continued. “He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.”

100 US TROOPS LAND IN NIGERIA AS ISLAMIC MILITANTS THREATEN WEST AFRICA REGIONAL SECURITY

President Donald Trump sits at a table monitoring military operations during Operation Epic Fury against Iran at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 2. (The White House via X Account/Anadolu/Getty Images)

Trump also thanked the Nigerian government for its cooperation in the mission.

“With his removal, ISIS’s global operation is greatly diminished,” he added.

Additional details surrounding the mission were not immediately available.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.

US MILITARY IN SYRIA CARRIES OUT 10 STRIKES ON MORE THAN 30 ISIS TARGETS: PHOTOS

The announcement comes after U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out multiple strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria in February as part of a joint military effort to “sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network.”

CENTCOM said U.S. forces struck ISIS infrastructure and weapons-storage targets using fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft.

DEADLY STRIKE ON US TROOPS TESTS TRUMP’S COUNTER-ISIS PLAN — AND HIS TRUST IN SYRIA’S NEW LEADER

The U.S. military carried out ten strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria following a December ambush that killed U.S. troops. (CENTCOM)

Trump told reporters on Jan. 27 that he had a “great conversation” with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

“All of the things having to do with Syria in that area are working out very, very well,” he said at the time. “So, we are very happy about it.”

CENTCOM announced in February that more than 50 ISIS terrorists had been killed or captured and more than 100 ISIS infrastructure targets struck during two months of targeted operations in Syria.

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The U.S. launched Operation Hawkeye Strike in response to an ISIS ambush that killed two U.S. service members and an American interpreter Dec. 13, 2025, in Palmyra, Syria.

Fox News Digital’s Ashley J. DiMella contributed to this report.