Polish ambassador to Ukraine Bartosz Cihotski believes that granting Ukraine EU candidate status at the end of June is quite realistic.
He expressed this opinion in an interview to "Ukrinform".
"It is absolutely real, and we support it. Now is not the time to say no to Ukrainians," the Polish diplomat said.
He stressed that candidacy is not membership, and the EU does not need to panic about it.
According to the ambassador, candidacy should encourage Ukraine to make some, perhaps unpopular, but necessary decisions about the work of domestic institutions.
"But it should also be understood that Russia will not sit idly by. It will play on this, it will promise for a negative decision some corridors, unblocking or exchange of prisoners.
Ukraine's candidacy is not supported in some countries anyway - not because anyone is against Ukrainians. But somewhere there is a bad experience with migrants from other continents, someone in the country has a difficult economic situation, and it is easy to blame Poles, Lithuanians or Ukrainians that they came and took their money and their work," - the Ambassador said.
Polish President Andrzej Duda reportedly began a tour of southern European countries on Wednesday to convince them to support granting EU candidate status to Ukraine.
Ukraine expects to receive candidate status at a summit of EU leaders on June 23-24.