Alistair Bunkall<\/a>, Europe correspondent<\/p>\nThe EU has agreed a deal to fund Ukraine for the next two years, just not the one it had planned.<\/p>\n
Talks to unlock frozen Russian assets went into the early hours of Friday morning, eventually reaching a conclusion just before 3am.<\/p>\n
Belgium had always opposed the use of Russian assets on the basis that most are being held in a Brussels-based clearing house, therefore leaving them legally exposed to any Russian retaliation.<\/p>\n
With support from other members, including Italy, the Belgians successfully argued for a Plan B that had initially been rejected: jointly raising a \u20ac90bn interest-free loan, borrowed against untapped funds in the bloc’s budget.<\/p>\n
It shares out responsibility for the money more evenly across member states, although three countries – Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia – won’t be a part of the agreement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ukraine will have to repay the loan but at no set date and only from reparations agreed with Russia, if that ever happens.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The EU says it has reserved the right to use the frozen assets if no deal is reached between Ukraine and Russia in the future that includes reparations from Moscow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although he tried to celebrate it as a win, in reality, it is a setback to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other Eastern European states, which had argued most strongly in favour of using the Russian assets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Ukraine has its money, and won’t care too much how it comes.<\/p>\n
However, the divisions in Europe won’t go unnoticed by Moscow – which will conclude its threats against Europe were ultimately successful.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Analysis: In reality, EU’s Ukraine deal is a plan B driven by division – it won’t go unnoticed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-357787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}