Kyiv's martial law extension and Poland's EU warning, July 2024
A look back at political developments touching Ukraine in the days up to 25 July 2024, from wartime measures at home to a dispute with Warsaw over EU accession.
What did Ukraine's political calendar look like on 25 July 2024? In the preceding days, domestic wartime decisions and a warning from a neighbouring government shaped the picture.
On 23 July, the Ukrainian parliament agreed to extend martial law and nationwide military mobilisation for a further 90 days, starting on 12 August.
A day later, on 24 July, Poland's Defence Minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, said Warsaw would block Ukraine's bid to join the European Union unless Kyiv resolved issues relating to the massacre of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists during the Second World War. He said this included finding and burying all victims killed on what is now Ukrainian territory.
On 25 July itself, a separate development emerged from Belarus. A German man who had been sentenced to death there for photographing Belarusian military sites in Ukraine appeared on television and urged President Alexander Lukashenko to pardon him.
Taken together, the reports from 23 to 25 July show the range of pressures around Ukraine at that moment: the legal framework of wartime governance at home, the conditions attached by a neighbouring state to the country's European path, and a death sentence handed down in Belarus in a case tied to military sites in Ukraine.
