“Voices of reason in the EU BLOCKED the ILLEGAL use of Russian reserves to fund Ukraine,” he added in a post on X. “Law and sanity win… for now.”
Grigory Karasin, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, wrote on Telegram “for now, international law, not Ursula von der Leyen, is prevailing.”
The EU’s climbdown was “a moderately encouraging sign,” he added. “The remnants of a civilized approach to financial traditions have stopped those who were pushing the situation toward a major collapse.”
Thursday’s talks hit a wall after Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever refused to drop his objections to using the assets, which are housed in a Brussels-based financial depository and would, he argued, open Belgium up to a salvo of legal and other threats from Moscow.
Those assets will remain immobilized but will not be used to prop up Ukraine’s war-battered economy. Kyiv, which was set to run out of cash as early as next spring as Russia’s full-scale invasion grinds into a fifth year, will instead receive a €90 billion loan guaranteed by the common EU budget.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who attended part of the summit Thursday to push for using the Kremlin’s frozen billions, said Friday morning he was “grateful to all leaders of the European Union for the European Council’s decision on €90 billion in financial support for Ukraine” and hailed the fact that “Russian assets remain immobilized.”