Wars naturally restrict citizens’ rights and limit the functioning of democratic institutions. However, being major existential threats, wars can also create conditions for reforms. In Ukraine, both the process of European integration and reforms have accelerated since Russia’s full-scale invasion. To address these parallel processes and investigate their inter-relationship, we ask: To what extent, how, and why does the EU integration accelerate reforms in Ukraine amidst the war? We build on compliance literature to explain significant developments in the policy areas of justice, anti-corruption, and gender equality. We demonstrate that reforms in these policy areas are enabled by the change in compliance calculations of domestic elites and the increased leverage of the EU. At the same time, not all the reforms can be explained by European integration: changing needs as a result of the war also drive reforms in Ukraine. The chapter makes two contributions. First, it traces Ukraine’s reforms examining their links to European integration. Second, it demonstrates how the changing domestic context leads to the realisation of the necessity of reforms.