Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk is a pretty blunt talker, particularly when it comes to the threat he feels Russia poses beyond Ukraine to the rest of Europe.
The leaders of the European Union’s 27 states were set to spend Thursday evening locked in negotiations about how exactly to fund a major package of financial aid for Ukraine.
Tusk did not dance around what he believed was at stake.
“Now we have a simple choice. It’s either money today or blood tomorrow, and I’m not talking only about Ukraine, I’m talking about Europe,” the Polish leader told reporters.
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What he meant was that if Europe could not find a way to throw a financial lifeline to Ukraine, it faced the prospect of Kyiv’s defences collapsing on the battlefield.
A total victory would bring Russia to the doorstep of the EU, heightening the chances of Moscow considering an attack on an eastern member state.
Discussions centred on a proposed €90 billion loan for Ukraine, backed by a mountain of Russian state cash that has been “frozen” inside the EU since the start of the war.
The plan is seen as Europe’s best hope of preventing Ukraine from running out of money by the middle of next year. Such a crisis scenario would undermine Kyiv’s efforts to hold off the grinding Russian advance, in a war heading towards its fifth year.
The vast majority of the Russian assets are on ice in Euroclear, a Belgian financial institution that acts as a depository for government bonds.
Resisted
Belgium has resisted the EU push for a loan funded by the assets. It fears Russia will retaliate in the courts, or target Belgian companies operating in countries friendly with Moscow.
Luc Frieden, Luxembourg’s prime minister, said the proposal was something that had never been done before. “If we take a European decision that affects one member state, we need to share the risk. We don’t know how Russia might react,” he said.
Technical talks have been going on for weeks to provide the Belgian government with solid assurances EU states will jointly cover the cost of any legal or financial fallout.
The Belgian government is looking for “unlimited” guarantees, something EU officials have said is not legally possible.
The EU would need a sizeable majority of the 27 leaders to approve the frozen asset loan. However, several governments said they would not be comfortable going forward without Belgium on board.
A second option, for the EU to fund a loan to Kyiv by borrowing the money as a bloc, would need the approval of all 27 capitals. Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orban said he will not agree to joint EU borrowing.
The advantage of a loan backed by Russia’s assets was that it could not be vetoed by Orban.
A growing number of leaders see the Hungarian as a hostile force working against the union’s interest. Something will have to be done about that if Orban wins another term in April elections.
This European Council summit swings on the position of another leader, Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever. Negotiations to try to bridge the divide between the majority and Belgium were expected to continue well into Thursday night.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he would prefer if Russia was made to pay for the loan, but ultimately Kyiv just needed the money from somewhere. Zelenskiy, who flew to Brussels to address EU leaders in person, said there had to be a decision before the end of the year.
