Zelensky announces new ‘Carpathian Eight.’ Tusk and Vučić attend its first summit (but Fico doesn’t)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced a new international cooperation initiative, the “Carpathian Eight”:
We are launching a new format — “C8,” the Carpathian Eight — bringing together us and our neighbors in Europe: Romania, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Austria, Hungary, and, of course, the European Union as a whole.
Zelensky said the new format aims to unite the states, regions, and local communities of the Carpathian region, with participants planning to cooperate on security, energy, logistics, and cross-border economic matters.
The first summit of the “Carpathian Eight” began on September 18 in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk region, with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, and Romanian President Nicușor Dan taking part.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who had said a day earlier that he planned to visit Ukraine, skipped the summit. Slovakia is represented at the meeting at a lower diplomatic level, according to reporting by the Ukrainian news outlet European Pravda.
About 550 business representatives are also expected to attend the summit, and Zelensky said investment and trade agreements worth a billion euros are expected to be signed by its conclusion.
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