The leaders of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine on Monday met European Council chief Charles Michel to push their EU membership bids, with Michel hailing the summit as a “milestone”.
Seeking to emerge from Moscow’s orbit, the eastern European nations set up the Associated Trio diplomatic format in May to jointly advance their bid to join the European Union.
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili, Moldova’s Maia Sandu and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine held talks with Michel near Georgia’s Black Sea city of Batumi, in the ancient clifftop Petra fortress overlooking the sea.
Addressing the three presidents, Michel said: “Our meeting here with you is an important milestone.”
He said the EU has pledged an “unprecedented investment package” worth 2.3 billion euros with the potential to mobilise up to 17 billion euros in public and private investments for the region.
At the end of the summit, the three presidents signed a joint declaration pledging to work together for their countries’ “European future.”
In an effort to derail former Soviet republics from seeking EU and NATO membership, Moscow has lavished economic and military aid to separatist regimes in Georgia’s breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and in Moldova’s Transnistria region.
The refusal of Ukraine’s then-president Viktor Yanukovich in 2013 to sign an association agreement with the EU triggered a revolt that toppled his pro-Russian government.
It was followed by Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, sparking an ongoing conflict with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
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