By Yuliia Dysa <\/p>\n
KYIV, Sept 4 (Reuters) – Ukraine sees a growing appetite among European allies to renew a serious discussion on the use of Russian frozen assets, \u200ca senior government official told Reuters, following an informal EU foreign ministers’ meeting \u200con Wednesday in which Kyiv took part. <\/p>\n
Ukraine faces a pressing budget deficit for this year and next and, as \u200bthe war with Russia escalates, officials say Kyiv needs an additional \u20ac27 billion ($31 billion) for defence spending in 2026. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian politicians have asked allies to be creative and fast in covering it. <\/p>\n
With some \u20ac210 billion of Russian central bank assets immobilised in the EU since the start of the war, \u200cthe Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden \u2060have suggested reopening the debate on their possible use, which some allies have long opposed, citing legal issues. <\/p>\n
Ukraine sees growing readiness among European \u2060partners to resume serious discussion and to reach a decision after all, the Ukrainian official said, requesting anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. <\/p>\n
The official said some allies wanted to keep assets as a \u200bnegotiating chip \u200bfor future talks, but Kyiv thinks this is \u200bunnecessary and wants access to the \u200cfunds now. <\/p>\n
Finance Minister Serhii Marchenko said that the Ukrainian government was talking to its partners about changing legal jurisdictions for some part of the frozen Russian assets. <\/p>\n
The bulk of the funds is held at the Brussels-based depository Euroclear. Belgium has resisted proposals to use the funds due to potential legal risks in the event of Russian retaliation or litigation. <\/p>\n
“We want to \u200cdiscuss it. The plan creates new conditions where it \u200bis not the responsibility of Belgium to face court \u200bdisputes with Russia, but the joint \u200bresponsibility of the 27 (EU members),” Marchenko told Euronews. <\/p>\n
Belgium said on Wednesday that \u200cits position remained unchanged. <\/p>\n
Ukraine’s budget deficit is \u200bmore than $32 billion this \u200byear and the government plans to cover it with funds from the EU and other partners. A similar amount would be required for 2027, Marchenko said, adding \u200bthat the government was now \u200cholding talks with its key lender, the International Monetary Fund, on next year’s budget \u200bplans. <\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8606 euros) <\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8610 euros) <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa, additional reporting by Olena \u200bHarmash Editing by Peter Graff and Philippa Fletcher) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Yuliia Dysa KYIV, Sept 4 (Reuters) – Ukraine sees a growing appetite among European allies to renew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13092,865,6039,78,3594,158,1296,3773,509,13054,26,37,854,12648,12646],"class_list":["post-37545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-13092","tag-a","tag-belgium","tag-eu","tag-european","tag-kyiv","tag-marchenko","tag-reuters","tag-russian","tag-sept-4","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian","tag-wednesday","tag-yuliia-dysa","tag-yuliia-dysa-kyiv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}