{"id":641849,"date":"2025-12-19T08:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T08:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/641849\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T08:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T08:18:12","slug":"russia-mocks-von-der-leyen-as-eu-backs-down-on-using-frozen-assets-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/641849\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia mocks von der Leyen as EU\u00a0backs down on using frozen assets\u00a0\u00a0 \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cVoices of reason in the EU BLOCKED the ILLEGAL use of Russian reserves to fund Ukraine,\u201d he added in a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/kadmitriev\/status\/2001877371666960849?s=46&amp;t=A2O6YyV8bpbkagdCXIPbwQ\" target=\"_blank\">post on X<\/a>. \u201cLaw and sanity win\u2026 for now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Grigory Karasin,\u00a0chairman\u00a0of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, wrote on Telegram \u201cfor now, international law, not Ursula von der Leyen, is prevailing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The EU\u2019s climbdown was \u201ca moderately encouraging sign,\u201d he added. \u201cThe remnants of a\u00a0civilized\u00a0approach to financial traditions have stopped those who were pushing the situation toward a major collapse.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Thursday\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Those assets will remain immobilized but will not be used to prop up\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s war-battered economy. Kyiv, which was set to run out of cash as early as next spring as Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion grinds into a fifth year, will instead receive a \u20ac90 billion\u00a0loan\u00a0guaranteed by the common EU budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who attended part of the summit Thursday to push for using the Kremlin\u2019s frozen billions, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/zelenskyyua\/status\/2001889263470936154?s=46\" target=\"_blank\">said Friday morning<\/a> he was \u201cgrateful to all leaders of the European Union for the European Council\u2019s decision on \u20ac90 billion in financial support for Ukraine\u201d and hailed the fact that \u201cRussian assets\u00a0remain immobilized.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cVoices of reason in the EU BLOCKED the ILLEGAL use of Russian reserves to fund Ukraine,\u201d he added&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[15856,1789,2000,12921,299,5187,1699,474,660,332,9322,657,1220,2601,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-641849","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-bart-de-wever","9":"tag-belgium","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-eu-budget","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-finance","16":"tag-kremlin","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-russian-politics","19":"tag-ukraine","20":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","21":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","22":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}