Two-year deal will cover most of Ukraine’s needs, but will be secured against EU borrowing rather than Russian assets
European Union leaders have decided to provide a massive interest-free loan to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years, after failing to agree on using frozen Russian assets, diplomats said in the early hours of Friday.
“We have a deal. Decision to provide €90bn ($106bn) of support to Ukraine for 2026-27 approved. We committed, we delivered,” EU Council president Antonio Costa said in a post on social media.
With public finances across the EU already strained by high debt levels, the European Commission had proposed using frozen Russian central bank assets to secure a huge loan to Kyiv, with joint borrowing against the EU budget as a second option.
Oh they could have used them. They chose not to.
Definitely shameful, I was hoping to see Europe develope a spine in the wake of the US losing theirs. That was wishful thinking.
Not really, Belgium wouldn’t budge, there was a clear majority in favor of using the frozen assets. This is mainly on Belgium.
Exactly. Either Belgium does not realise we are already at war or Putin has his fingers stretched deeply across the European mainland.
That’s a choice. And it’s Belgium, the rest of Europe could have pressured them into doing the right thing but they’re not that serious about Russia so they didn’t.
if they weren’t serious, there wouldn’t be a deal.
they, the EU, are/is serious.
the Belgians are just being greedy little cunts.
…so business as usual ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah I guess they wouldn’t be working on the 20th sanctions package if they weren’t serious /s
These cute little deals and sanctions packages are rolled out periodically to make it look like they’re doing something substantial to counter Russia.
In reality they’re easy political wins that don’t make many waves, in Russia or with EU voters.
The proof is in the outcome, 4 years on since the full invasion and Putin is as emboldened as ever. Maybe we just need to wait for the 21st sanctions package to hit, maybe then he’ll rethink things.