Russia has vowed to tighten security in border areas amid deadly artillery strikes and armed raids from Ukraine, and said the European Union would suffer legal and reputational damage if it approved a plan to use frozen Russian assets to aid Kyiv.
At least four people were killed in a Russian missile attack on Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, as Moscow’s military said it had cleared anti-Kremlin militants from the village of Kozinka, 80km from Kharkiv in the Russian border region of Belgorod.
Leaders of EU states meeting on Thursday and Friday in Brussels are expected to discuss a proposal from the bloc to use some €190 billion in Russian assets frozen in the EU banking system to buy arms for Ukraine. The money would come from revenue such as interest payments, not from seizure and sale of the assets themselves.
“The amount of money – three billion [euro] per year – is not even extraordinary. But it is not negligible,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
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European states want to ramp up the production and purchase of arms to supply Ukraine and replenish their own stocks, amid a Republican-imposed freeze on US aid to Kyiv and fears for what a second Donald Trump presidency could mean for the Nato alliance.
“The Europeans are fully aware of the damage that such decisions may do to their economy and image, to their reputation as a reliable guarantor of the inviolability of property,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the plan for Russian assets.
“Damage will be inevitable. People involved in such decisions, and states that decide to do that would face prosecution for many decades.”
Ukraine – which wants all of Russia’s frozen assets to be used to pay reparations – said it had received the first €4.5 billion payment from a new four-year, €50 billion EU economic support fund.
Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said “massive” shelling from Ukraine killed at least two people on Wednesday, and announced that entry to several districts would be restricted and schools would close early for Easter holidays.
The region plans to evacuate 9,000 children from border areas amid daily artillery and drone attacks and raids from Russian militants based in Ukraine who vow to overthrow Vladimir Putin, Russia’s autocratic leader of 24 years.
“Of course, the primary task is to ensure security. There are different ways here, they are difficult, but we will do them,” Mr Putin told officials who oversaw his inevitable re-election last weekend in a ballot that was closed to all real opposition candidates.
Amid farmers’ protests in Poland and other states, the EU has agreed to expand the cap on food imports from Ukraine to include eggs, poultry and sugar in a provisional deal on extending tariff-free access to Ukrainian food producers until June 2025.
France dismissed a claim from Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service that it was preparing to send 2,000 soldiers to Ukraine.
The defence ministry in Paris said the claim was “a further example of the systematic use of mass disinformation by Russia”.
