Zelenskyy urges EU leaders to agree on handing over Russian assets

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged EU leaders to reach a deal at a fraught summit on Thursday where European Union leaders were trying to overcome differences on whether to use frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine’s war effort.

Zelenskyy, who took part in the Brussels summit said reaching a deal was the right thing to do and would allow Ukraine to keep fighting.

“Just like authorities confiscate money from drug traffickers and seize weapons from terrorists, Russian assets must be used to defend against Russian aggression and rebuild what was destroyed by Russian attacks. It’s moral. It’s fair. It’s legal,” he said.

Efforts to reach a deal a deal at the summit is seen as a critical test of the bloc’s strength.

“We just can’t afford to fail. We have to show that we are strong,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said, adding that leaders would stay at the summit as long as needed to find a solution.

The EU sees Russia’s war as a threat to its own security and wants to keep Ukraine financed and fighting.

WATCH | Russia ‘ready’ if Europe wants war, Putin says:

Putin says Russia is ‘ready’ if Europe wants war

Ahead of a meeting to discuss the U.S. proposal for peace in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed European counter-proposals as ‘unacceptable’ and said his country was ready for war if Europe wants one.

With public finances across the EU already strained by high debt levels, the European Commission has proposed using frozen Russian central bank assets that are mostly held in a Belgian clearing house to secure a huge loan to Kyiv.

But Belgium is deeply concerned about being left exposed to legal and financial risks, and other states including Italy have also expressed worries.

Keen to show strength

EU leaders arriving at the summit said it was imperative they find a solution. They were also keen to show European countries’ strength and resolve after U.S. President Donald Trump last week called them “weak.”

“Now we have a simple choice — either money today or blood tomorrow,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. “All European leaders have to finally rise to this occasion.”

Briefing reporters later in the day, Tusk said leaders agreed that they should work on a loan rather than other options, but stressed that they had many hours of increasingly technical discussions ahead of them.

WATCH | Trump calls EU leaders ‘weak’:

‘I think they’re weak,’ Trump says about European leaders

U.S. President Donald Trump criticized European nations for their handling of issues such as migration and the war in Ukraine in a sit-down interview with Politico. His comments haven’t gone unnoticed, sparking reactions among European leaders like Pope Leo and former British diplomat Arthur Snell.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told his country’s parliament early on Thursday that he had not yet seen guarantees that answered his concerns on legal and liquidity risks and that financing plans were still changing “as we speak.”

Russia’s central bank has said the EU plans to use its assets are illegal and reserved the right to use all available means to protect its interests. It filed a lawsuit in Moscow this week seeking $230 billion US ($316 billion Cdn) in damages from clearing house Euroclear.

The stakes are high because without the EU’s financial help Ukraine will run out of money in the second quarter of next year and most likely lose the war to Russia, which the EU fears would bring closer the threat of Russian aggression against the bloc.

Kallas said she saw chances of a deal on the assets at 50/50. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said: “My impression is that we can come to an agreement.”

‘The only game in town’

The latest draft version of the summit conclusion, which is not yet agreed on and could still change substantially, proposes that the leaders take the political decision of going ahead with the reparation loan, and task officials with “urgently” sorting out the details.

The draft text specifies the risk would be shared among EU states, among several conditions meant to reassure Belgium and others.

Another option could have been for the EU to borrow the needed amount against the security of the EU budget and then lend the money to Ukraine.

But such a move would require unanimity among the 27 EU countries and Moscow-friendly Hungary has already said it would veto it.

Diplomats said the use of the Russian assets was therefore in practice “the only game in town.”

But to use it, EU leaders first need to convince Belgium, which holds 185 billion euros ($298 billion Cdn) of the total 210 billion euros ($339 billion Cdn) frozen in Europe, that they will not leave it alone with the bill if Russia successfully sues in international courts over the plan.