Ukrainians have been fighting bureaucratically, not with weapons, since 2007, 2008 for nato membership, for eu membership. it is actually we talk about nato so much, but ukraine s membership in the eu hugely important. explain why. no, you re exactly right indeed, joe. when you go back to 2014, it was the desire of the part of ukraine to many of the people to join the eu that in many cases brought about the earlier russian intervention because what vladimir putin wanted to stop was ukraine s westward drift, if you will, from his point of view. the eu represents anchoring in a club of democracies, market-oriented economy. so in some ways i think this could be more significant. nato is not going to happen, but now that you have the eu talking about accelerating an entry plan, that would be essential. but for anchoring ukraine in the