EU to agree on financing for Ukraine using Russian assets in coming days

French President Emmanuel Macron reported that France, together with EU countries, will complete work on a solution in the coming days that will allow Ukraine to be financed with frozen Russian assets.

Reuters reports this.

After an online meeting of the "Coalition of the Willing", Macron said that Ukraine needs a "serious" peace built on international law.

The coalition will create a working group led by France and Britain, which will include Turkey and, for the first time, the United States. The groupʼs task is to prepare security guarantees for Ukraine after a future peace agreement.

"In the coming days, we will agree on the contributions of each side and finalize these guarantees. This is important for Ukraine, for realistic peace negotiations and for maintaining pressure on Russia," Macron said.

Ukraine, meanwhile, said it supports the proposed framework for a peace agreement with Russia, but stressed that the most sensitive issues should be resolved at a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump.

Macron added that the EU and the European Commission will jointly finalize the decision regarding frozen Russian assets.

What preceded

The possibility of providing Ukraine with a €140 billion loan using frozen Russian assets has been discussed since early October. At that time, EU leaders were unable to agree on the loan — Belgium opposed it, and France and Luxembourg were concerned about the legal consequences.

The European Commission has proposed providing Ukraine with a loan using Russian state assets held in Euroclear, a Belgian financial institution. Under the plan, if Russia refuses to pay reparations to Ukraine after the war, it will lose rights to these assets.

Belgium opposed the plan out of concern that Russia would sue it if it went ahead. Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever asked the other 26 EU countries to guarantee coverage of legal and financial risks.

Politico reported on October 21 that EU ambassadors had tentatively agreed on a plan to provide a “reparations loan” for Ukraine. However, at a meeting on October 23, EU leaders did not agree to allocate the loan and postponed the issue until December.

Euronews wrote on November 8 that negotiations between the European Commission and Belgian authorities on using frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine have not yet yielded any results.

Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg, Russia has prepared a response to the Westʼs possible "reparations loan" to Ukraine — it will nationalize foreign assets.

Directing frozen Russian assets to restore and compensate Ukraine is also one of the points of the EUʼs alternative peace plan, Bloomberg wrote.

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