The politics of bringing Ukraine into European defence: Geopolitical calculation or economic necessity?

The Russian aggression against Ukraine has fundamentally changed the EU's security and defence policy and made taboos relating to Union's material defence capabilities fall. Progress in the further integration of defence industrial policies, with the aim of increasing their capacity, and the use of the extra-budgetary European Peace Facility to supply arms to Ukraine have proved to be the backbone of EU military assistance to Ukraine. But, two years after the outbreak of war, the arsenals of the Member States are depleted, budgets are stretched and it seems that the best way to continue supporting Ukraine and to further develop Europe's defence capabilities is to integrate Ukraine into EU security and defence policy. Ukraine’s fast-growing defence industrial capacity and its battle-hardened military capability would be a significant asset for the EU. However, such a step would be unprecedented and would disrupt the prevailing rules of the EU membership process, and therefore it raises a number of questions among the EU member states and institutions. By relying on elite interviews and a qualitative method design, this paper to examines the internal and external dynamics underlying the idea of a fast-track defence integration of Ukraine and analysis them against the backdrop of the theoretical reflections regarding the integration of the core state powers.