EU accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova formally opened Thursday after all 27 member states gave their approval, clearing the final diplomatic obstacle that had kept the process in limbo for months and delivering what Kyiv called the most consequential European signal since the full-scale Russian invasion began in February 2022.

What Budapest Finally Agreed To

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had blocked the opening of accession talks for more than a year, citing unresolved disputes over Ukraine's treatment of its ethnic Hungarian minority in the Zakarpattia region and broader objections to the enlargement timeline. A deal struck earlier this week — its full terms not publicly disclosed — reportedly includes amendments to Ukrainian language legislation and bilateral economic commitments that gave Orbán sufficient political cover to lift his veto.

"Hungary made its position clear from the beginning: we wanted real guarantees, not paper promises," Orbán said Thursday in Budapest. "We received those guarantees. The path forward is now open, and we expect Ukraine to honor its commitments fully."

In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky called the vote "a historic day," framing EU membership as a core war aim alongside the return of Russian-occupied territories. "We have chosen Europe, we are fighting for Europe, and today Europe has chosen us," he said in an address to parliament Thursday morning.

First Cluster: Rule of Law

The opening cluster of negotiations covers rule of law, judicial independence, anti-corruption mechanisms, and fundamental rights — the same chapters that stalled enlargement bids from North Macedonia and Albania for years. EU officials said Ukraine has made "substantial but uneven" progress on these benchmarks. Kyiv will need to demonstrate measurable improvements before this first cluster can be provisionally closed and the talks advance to subsequent chapters covering trade, agriculture, and financial regulation.

Moldova, which has moved faster on anti-corruption reforms, is expected to progress through the first cluster more quickly. Brussels officials suggested Moldova could close its opening cluster before the end of 2027, while Ukraine's timeline is explicitly tied to the security and political situation on the ground.

War Runs in Parallel

The backdrop to Thursday's vote is a war entering its fifth year with no ceasefire in sight. Ukrainian forces struck a Russian Svetlyak-class border patrol ship in occupied Crimea overnight Wednesday, along with military logistics infrastructure — fuel depots and rail lines supporting Russian supply lines in the peninsula. Russian forces launched drone attacks on residential buildings in Kharkiv Thursday morning, wounding several civilians and starting fires in two apartment blocks.

The pattern — diplomatic progress in Brussels, artillery and drone strikes along the front — has become the defining rhythm of 2026. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas acknowledged Thursday that accession negotiations and active warfare had never before proceeded simultaneously in European history.

"We are making a political statement as much as we are opening a legal process," she told reporters in Brussels. "The statement is that Ukraine's future is inside the European Union, regardless of what Russia does on the battlefield."

Washington Watches — Carefully

The reaction from Washington was notably more measured than it would have been under the previous administration. A State Department spokesperson confirmed that the United States "supports Ukraine's European future" but declined to endorse the accession timeline, and administration officials have privately expressed frustration with European decisions they believe extend the conflict rather than create conditions for a negotiated settlement.

That tension between Washington and Brussels over Ukraine's long-term trajectory has become one of the defining fault lines in transatlantic relations this year — separate from, but related to, the ongoing US-Iran ceasefire process that is already stretching American diplomatic bandwidth. European officials are increasingly operating on the assumption that U.S. support, while not withdrawn, is no longer unconditional, and that the accession process serves partly as a structural anchor that does not depend on American guarantees remaining stable.

The Long Road Ahead

Full EU membership for Ukraine, even in the most optimistic scenarios Brussels officials will state on the record, is a decade away. The negotiations themselves are expected to take five to seven years minimum, and ratification requires approval from the legislatures of all current member states — a political gauntlet that past candidate countries have found treacherous.

Still, Thursday's vote was received in Kyiv as something more than symbolic. The opening of formal accession talks locks the EU into a political commitment that is structurally harder to reverse than a summit declaration or a financial aid package. For Ukraine, that distinction matters enormously — and for Moscow, which has consistently argued that EU integration and sovereignty are incompatible with Russian security interests, Thursday's vote is another answer to a question it hoped Europe would leave open.