The article focuses on the EU conditionality as a primary toolkit for its relations with the neighbouring countries. The comparative analysis that the article provides, stresses important differences in the patterns of conditionality that the EU applies for Ukraine and countries of the Western Balkans. Despite of that, as well as the history of candidacy status, the pattern of compliance with the conditionality is rather similar in both cases. Moreover, in terms of democratization, the internal political situation in Ukraine is even more dynamic, due to the existential external challenges of the Russian aggression and the internal consequences of this aggression.