Cyprus ready to enable Ukraine EU accession as 2026 EU Council President – interview with Ambassador Firillas

The Presidency of the Council of the European Union is the office that sets the agenda and presides over the EU Council, the EU's legislative body comprising direct representatives of the 27 member states' governments, in contrast to the elected EU Parliament. The Presidency rotates among member states for six-month terms, with responsibilities shared by two other members in a presidential trio. Cyprus will assume the Presidency from January through June of 2026. This is not a decision-making role, but they will be responsible for mediating disputes among EU states during that time.

Ambassador Firillas, who assumed his post as the Cypriot ambassador to Kyiv in July 2025, emphasized that Cyprus, in this mediating role, could help facilitate and guide Ukraine on its path to EU membership. The Mediterranean island nation is one of the more recent additions to the EU, joining in 2004 along with Czechia, Poland, and much of Eastern Europe. Unlike its fellow EU member states, however, Cyprus shares a very notable characteristic in common with Ukraine: a third of its territory is under foreign military occupation – Turkish.

“The process of going through the different steps and stages of getting European Union accession are long, they can be complicated, they can be very technical,” the ambassador explained, responding to a question about Ukraine’s EU accession process.

“The scale may be different; in other words, Cyprus is small, Ukraine is very large, but in terms of adjustments that need to be made in terms of the technocratic, if you will, arrangements,  in terms of the nature of the people that need to be involved in the negotiations, characteristics that Europe is looking for in their interlocutors. All these elements are very critical, and it's something that we think we were well-positioned to help Ukraine with.”

Cyprus also stands out as an EU state that is not in NATO, a distinction it shares with Austria, Ireland, and Malta – in Cyprus’ case, their refusal so far to join the Alliance may be linked to Turkey’s rather prominent role in the North Atlantic partnership. This ‘outsider’ status is something else Ukraine and Cyprus share, and Cyprus, like Ukraine, has to rely on other instruments for security, such as common European frameworks under the EU.

“The European Union provides indirect hard security,” Firillas explained.

“It provides economic security, social security, it provides security in terms of democratic norms and values, and it provides security in terms of freedoms for individuals. But the European Union is not a player in the first line of defense. It is only the first line of defense from a political slash legal point of view. We feel certainly that an aggressor will have to think twice and three times before wishing to attack a European Union member state or to violate their sovereignty.”

This ‘security’ has been something Ukraine has been seeking since before the Maidan protests and the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, but Ukrainian efforts have been stymied not only be foreign invasion, but by intransigence by EU member states themselves, notably Hungary. Budapest also used its position in the Presidency in the second half of 2024 to justify a series of provocative anti-Ukrainian diplomatic missions outside of its authority in the position. Cyprus, for its part, claims that it is aware of Hungarian attitudes towards Ukraine’s EU membership and that, unlike Hungary, is willing and able to work towards accession.

“We've raised an eyebrow on a variety of decisions taken by Hungarian colleagues,” Ambassador Firillas said.

“Hungarian government, Hungarian leadership. I don't think that's news. It is something, it is an obstacle, is certainly, let's call it a wrench in the works to use that British expression, it's something that we need to fix … We're there to facilitate and we're there to provide answers. But on a subject as big as this, I can guarantee you that Cyprus may have the lead. But we're not working alone. We're working with the trio of the presidency, in other words, our Polish and Danish counterparts. We're working with all the organs of Brussels. And we want to see progress. I think that's the common denominator which unites all of these players from the European Union side vis-a-vis the Ukrainian question, the Ukrainian-European question, and the obstacles to it.”

That initiative, likely to be welcomed by Ukraine’s own EU integration officials, is informed by Cyprus’ own history of conflict. The island, historically Greek, gained a significant Turkish minority during the centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule. In the years leading up to and following Cypriot independence in 1960, intercommunal violence between the Greek and Turkish communities was common, along with political conflict over the country's status in relation to Greece and Turkey and nationalist political turmoil in both. Following an attempted military coup in 1974 backed by Greece, Turkey invaded Cyprus and occupied the northern third of the country. Ever since then, Turkey has supported the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the occupied zone as an unrecognized para-state. There has been an ongoing peace process ever since, with continued disputes over maritime territory.

The similarities between the Cypriot example and the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territories has led some analysts to advocate for a “Cypriot model” to end the full-scale invasion:

freeze the front lines and seek diplomatic and legal rather than military redress. Ambassador Firillas, however, cautioned against using Cyprus as an example of a successful peace.

“I do not in any way suggest that Ukraine needs to look at Cyprus as a way of resolving a conflict, because a conflict is not resolved,” the ambassador stated.

“Unless, of course, Ukraine is thinking about trying to freeze the conflict, the territorial aspect of the conflict. I don't know, we're certainly not in a place where we have the right or are in a place where we should suggest looking at our case as an example.”

He explained that, ultimately, the conflict in his own country boiled down to a war involving two NATO members, as both Greece and Turkey are part of the Alliance. NATO, as a result, worked diplomatically to control intra-alliance conflict. And despite peace in Cyprus, Cypriots say that they would have preferred a different solution.

“If we could have avoided what we’ve had for the last 51 years, we would have been happier,” Ambassador Firillas noted.

Despite these difficulties, the Ambassador stated that his embassy was ready to provide Ukraine with both direct aid and counsel. As with any diplomatic mission, the day-to-day work of building relationships often comes down to cultural, educational, and business exchange and support. While his tenure has only just begun and everything is still in its exploratory phases, the Cypriot ambassador hopes to build programs that can be implemented both in the short term and when conditions become more feasible.

One common theme to build this bilateral support around is the shared Hellenic heritage of both nations. Greeks have lived on the territory of what is now Ukraine since antiquity. The ruins of ancient Greek city-states dot the Black Sea coast from Odesa through Crimea. Ukraine’s Orthodox religion comes from its deep ties to Greece in the medieval period. In the 19th century, the Greek community of Odesa hosted their fellows from throughout Ottoman territory to form the Filiki Eteria, the revolutionary society that led the way to Greek independence.

Ukraine’s contemporary Greek community bore the brunt of the Russian invasion, starting in 2014. They live – or, unfortunately, lived – primarily in the south of the Donetsk region around the city of Mariupol, the site of Russia’s deadliest atrocities. They now must live either in occupation or exile.

“My priority is to restore, if I can use that word, the position of Cyprus in Ukraine,” Firillas stated.

“We have a history together that also combines our national identity, but also yours, whether it's the religion, whether it's the fact that Odessa played such an important role in Greek national aspirations, the presence here of a significant Greek minority – that many of them are refugees now.”

These ties are being built right now with the exiled community of Mariupol, the Ambassador added. He has begun reaching out to Mariupol State University, now located in Kyiv, and wants to provide support for refugee issues, improve the status of the Greek language in Ukraine, and explore options for academic and scholarly collaboration. He says he is confident in his ability to establish scholarship programs for Ukrainian students interested in studying there, as well as offer pre-enrollment Greek language classes.

“My first request was to visit the Mariupol State University in Kyiv and to engage in ways that we can further cooperate because it is a, apart from the fact that it is a well-known university, now it's a refugee university, and the issue of refugees is very close to our heart, very painful for us,” Firillas emphasized.

“But, they're also a university with a very deep Hellenic tradition, language, et cetera. And it is also a community hub. And one of the areas in which we have a great deal of experience in Cyprus is being able to absorb our refugees. But also help them maintain their social cohesion as communities.”

Maintaining the cohesion of refugee communities is something that Cyprus has experience with: 

the displaced municipalities of northern Cyprus have continued to operate in exile in the south. They maintain their elected governments, host cultural events, and continue to bind their cities, towns, and villages together, even as they are now forced to live elsewhere.

“It's important to maintain the tradition, to maintain the idea of what the community is about, especially as these communities and their homes and their traditions and their history is being systematically erased in the North,” Ambassador Firillas said.

“The changing of names with a variety of, I'll call them, diversions from history. I think something that is happening also now in the occupied areas in Ukraine. As I said, this is a very emotional issue. It's a very important subject to relate to our Ukrainian interlocutors here and see how we can help.”

This help will undoubtedly be welcomed by Kyiv, but progress in Ukraine’s EU accession process remains an open question. Cyprus, at least, has expressed its willingness to give Ukraine a boost while it holds the EU council presidency, and according to Ambassador Firillas, he plans to make true bilateral cooperation between the two nations a physical reality.