Key events
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Opening summary
European leaders are meeting on Thursday with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Brussels to reaffirm support for Kyiv. The president of the European Council, António Costa, welcomed Zelenskyy, addressing him as “future member of the European Union”. The meeting comes as the 27 member bloc formally adopted a 19th package of sanctions against Russia for its war against Ukraine that includes a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas imports. The Danish rotating presidency of the EU said:
It’s a significant package that targets main Russian revenue streams through new energy, financial, and trade measures.
Zelenskyy and Costa arrive for the European Council leaders’ summit in Brussels. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters
In a major policy shift, Donald Trump on Wednesday imposed sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil firms. New restrictions have been unveiled against Rosneft and Lukoil – as well as dozens of subsidiaries – because of “Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.
Trump said to reporters that he has a “very good relationship” with his Russian counterpart, but felt he had to cancel their planned meeting in Budapest as “it didn’t feel right to me”. In a sign of growing frustration, he told reporters:
It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it. But we’ll do it in the future … I have good conversations. And then, they don’t go anywhere. They just don’t go anywhere.
He also hinted that the sanctions could be lifted if the Russian president was prepared to cooperate in peace talks.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the United States and the European Union on Thursday for agreeing on new energy sanctions against Russia, saying they were “very important”. He also told reporters in Brussels that a ceasefire was possible in Russia’s war on Ukraine but that yet more pressure would be needed on Moscow to make it happen. He ruled out making any territorial concessions to Russia.
A proposal by the European Commission to use Russian assets frozen in Europe to provide a €140bn (£122bn) “reparation loan” to Ukraine will be discussed on Thursday. Under the plan, the EU would use cash balances from frozen Russian central bank securities to give Kyiv support that would cover much of its funding needs for 2026 and 2027. “I won’t declare victory on this until we’re done but I see a very broad support for using frozen Russian assets,” the Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said at a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels.
However, the Belgian prime minister, Bart De Wever, laid out three demands on the use of Russian immobilised assets to provide a loan to Ukraine, adding he would oppose that measure until he secured guarantees. De Wever, whose country is home to chief asset holder Euroclear, said he did not see the legal basis for such a decision yet, adding that immobilised assets had not even been touched in the second world war.
He said:
“We are the only ones, Euroclear is the only financial institution that offers the windfall profits to Ukraine. We know that there are vast amounts of Russian money in other countries who have always been silent about this.
“If these three demands, which I think are quite reasonable, are met then we can go forward. If not, I will do everything in my power at the European level, also at the national level, politically and legally to stop this decision.”
EU countries will on Thursday agree on filling the financial needs of Ukraine in 2026 and 2027, the European Council president, António Costa, said. ““The technicality of the solutions, we continue to work on with the European Commission, but the most important is the political decision,” Costa said before a summit of EU leaders in Brussels.
Tens of thousands of people in Hungary are expected to turn out for rival rallies by Viktor Orbán’s ruling party and his main opponent as they kick off campaigning for elections next year in a highly polarised political climate.
Engineers have repaired a damaged high-voltage line and restored external power to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine, its Russian-installed management said on Thursday. The plant – Europe’s largest, with six reactors – was seized by Russian troops in the first weeks of Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It currently produces no electricity, but needs external power to ensure that fuel in the reactors remains cool and no meltdown occurs. Until Thursday, the plant had been without power for 30 days, relying on backup diesel generators.
The Netherlands will hold a general election on 29 October after the previous government collapsed. Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV leads the polls, though some support has shifted to Christian Democrats.