Modern Ukraine turns 35 today.For much of its independence, Ukraine could reasonably argue that it was a young democracy struggling to emerge from the Soviet system it inherited.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.Institutions had to be built almost from scratch. Oligarchic interests had to be dismantled. A national identity suppressed for centuries had to become the basis of an actual state. Yet, for all the positives, Ukraine no longer has the luxury of treating corruption, institutional weakness and political amateurism as growing pains.The stakes are simply too high.EU membership was never inevitableUkraine is currently being offered perhaps the greatest geopolitical opportunity of its 35 years of independence: membership in the European Union.We should be very clear about how extraordinary that is.I have worked with EU affairs for years, and there was nothing inevitable about Ukraine becoming a member state.For most of the post-Maidan period, it was not even seriously on offer.The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, signed in 2014, promised political association and economic integration. It did not promise accession.Even visa-free travel, which Ukrainians understandably celebrated as an enormous civilizational achievement when it arrived in 2017, was its own carefully conditional process. Ukraine had to meet benchmarks concerning border management, the rule of law, corruption and other areas before Brussels agreed to lift short-stay visa requirements.