On Thursday, EU leaders agreed to work toward using frozen Russian assets to help finance Ukraine in 2026 and 2027, signalling a potential shift in how the bloc supports Kyiv, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said after talks in Brussels.
Tusk said there was broad agreement that using Russian assets frozen after Moscow's 2022 invasion would be justified and beneficial for Europe, though some countries remain cautious and are seeking strong legal and financial safeguards.
Around €210 billion in Russian assets are frozen in the EU, with the bulk held at Belgium's Euroclear clearing house. Belgium and other states fear possible legal or financial retaliation from Russia, making guarantees a central focus of the discussions.
Rather than relying on new joint EU borrowing, leaders are now leaning toward a "reparations loan" model backed by Russian assets, with further technical negotiations expected in the coming months.
Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk:
"We are certainly after a breakthrough and the breakthrough means that everybody agrees that it is worth trying and that the use of Russian assets for Ukraine would be justified and good for Europe, but some countries will fight until the end to maximise guarantees for themselves."
"This declaration that we all want to use Russian assets for Ukraine was made and I don't think anybody is going to go back on it."
"We have many ours of increasingly technical discussions ahead of us, because the countries which are the most at risk of Russian financial reprisals in the future, mainly Belgium, but not only, are looking for safeguards."
"The use of the so-called headroom in the EU budget does not inspire enthusiasm in key EU countries, so I would not see hope for plans to use European money for this. We will rather be looking at the reparations loan on the basis of Russian assets and we will rather be looking to provide guarantees for countries most at risk, like Belgium, so that they fell these guarantees are serious."