Zelensky said he was grateful to European leaders for the deal, which he described as “significant support that truly strengthens our resilience”.<\/p>\n
Writing on X, he said it was important for Russian assets to remain “immobilised” and said: “Thank you for the result and for unity”.<\/p>\n
In another development, French President Emmanuel Macron said he believed it would be “useful” for Europe to re-engage with Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
“I believe that it’s in our interest as Europeans and Ukrainians to find the right framework to re-engage this discussion,” he said, adding that Europeans should find the means to do so “in coming weeks”.<\/p>\n
EU \u2060leaders avoided “chaos \u200dand \u200ddivision” \u200bwith \u200ctheir decision to provide Ukraine with a loan through borrowing cash rather than \u200buse frozen Russian assets, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De \u200bWever said early on Friday.<\/p>\n
“We remained united,” De \u200cWever added. <\/p>\n
Ukraine is months from running out of cash and Zelensky said without an injection by spring Ukraine would “have to reduce production of drones”.<\/p>\n
The EU estimates Ukraine needs an extra \u20ac135 billion to stay afloat over the next two years, with the cash crunch set to start in April.<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who had pushed for the asset plan, said the final decision on the loan “sends a clear signal” to Putin.<\/p>\n
Russia had warned EU leaders not to use its money, but Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said they had to “rise to this occasion”.<\/p>\n
The agreement offers Kyiv a desperately needed lifeline amid a flurry of diplomacy as US President Donald Trump pushes for a quick deal to end Russia’s war.<\/p>\n
US and Russian officials are due to meet in Miami this weekend for further talks on a peace plan, a White House official has told AFP news agency. It is thought Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev will talk to Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Miami.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Zelensky announced Ukrainian and US delegations would hold new talks on Friday and Saturday in the United States.<\/p>\n
He said he wanted Washington to give more details on the guarantees it could offer to protect Ukraine from another invasion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zelensky said he was grateful to European leaders for the deal, which he described as “significant support that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-324164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}