Kyiv welcomes EU loan despite no deal on Russian assets
Ukraine thanked the European Union for agreeing to provide it with 90 billion euros ($160 billion) in support over the next two years, even though the bloc failed to agree on an ambitious plan to use frozen Russian assets to finance it.
The risk of finding money was high for Kiev because without financial assistance from the EU, Ukraine will run out of money in the second quarter of 2026 and will most likely lose the war against Russia; The EU fears this could bring closer the threat of Russian aggression against the bloc.
“This is an important support that really strengthens our resilience,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on social media after EU leaders agreed on a 90 billion euro loan at a summit in Brussels on Friday.
EU leaders decided early Friday to borrow cash to finance Ukraine’s defense against Russia rather than using frozen Russian assets.
The decision came after hours of discussions between leaders over an unprecedented loan based on frozen Russian assets; this has proven too politically intractable to resolve at this stage.
The main challenge was to provide Belgium, where 185 billion euros of Russia’s total assets in Europe are held, with sufficient guarantees against the financial and legal risks that could arise from possible Russian retaliation for leaving the money to Ukraine.
Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya said, “In fact, there are moments when the saying ‘Perfect is the enemy of the good’ should be kept in mind. It was a long night for European leaders, but they managed to achieve a workable result.” he said.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also said he was “pleased that common sense prevailed and that we managed to secure the necessary resources with a solution with solid legal and financial foundations.”
Russia, meanwhile, welcomed the EU’s failure to reach an agreement on the use of its frozen sovereign wealth.
Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special representative for investment and economic cooperation, said “law and reason” won.
“A huge BLOW to the EU warmongers led by the failed Ursula – Reasonable voices in the EU BLOCKED the ILLEGAL use of Russian reserves to finance Ukraine,” Dmitriev said on X, referring to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who pushed hard for a reparations loan backed by frozen Russian assets but failed, argued that it was still a good deal.
“This is good news for Ukraine, bad news for Russia, and that was our intention,” he said.
Regarding the other important issue of the summit, Merz and von der Leyen expressed that they were confident that the EU could sign a controversial free trade agreement with the South American bloc Mercosur in January, despite insufficient support at the summit.
