Some European states are not pulling their weight when it comes to providing financial support to Ukraine and greater “burden sharing” is needed, Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen has said.
As EU states are expected to face pressure to step up aid to Ukraine, given increasingly conditional support provided by US president Donald Trump, foreign ministers met in Luxembourg on Monday to continue discussions on a plan to use frozen Russian state assets to fund a huge loan to Kyiv.
The loan would be guaranteed on the back of €170 billion in Russia central bank assets, which were frozen in Europe by economic sanctions after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.
The funds would only be paid back to Russia if it agreed to compensate Ukraine for the damage caused by the war.
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In September, Ukraine estimated it would need $50 billion (€43 billion) in external support for 2026.
Belgium has several reservations about the plan, fearing its exposure as the host of Euroclear, a Belgian securities depository where the Russian assets in question are immobilised.
The Belgian government is insisting on legal guarantees that EU states would jointly agree to bear the cost of any legal challenge to the loan from Russia, or any future penalties.
Speaking on Monday, Mr Rasmussen said he hoped there would be a breakthrough on the reparations loan “as soon as possible”.
Separately, the Danish foreign minister said some EU states needed to up the amount of financial aid they were providing to Ukraine.
“We have an issue with burden sharing among the European countries, Denmark is doing a lot, some other countries are doing similar to us, others should step up, we will push for that,” he said.
European politicians are nervously waiting to see what will come from a meeting of Mr Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the coming weeks in Budapest.
Officials fear the summit will undo months of diplomatic work by Ukraine and Europe to convince Mr Trump that Russia is holding up the prospects of peace in the war. Plans for a Trump-Putin meeting came just as Ukraine felt it was close to securing a supply of long-range Tomahawk missiles from the US.
Ukraine remained convinced that Mr Trump “wants to end this war on fair terms”, Dutch minister for foreign affairs David van Weel said. The US president was the “key figure” who could get people around a negotiating table, he said.
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top representative on foreign affairs, said she would have preferred if Mr Putin had agreed to meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy for talks.
Russia would only seriously talk about a ceasefire deal when put under pressure, she said.
The former Estonian prime minister said allowing Russia to come out on top in any peace deal would “signal to all the aggressors in the world that you can go and take what you want”.
Ms Kallas, who chairs the meetings of EU foreign ministers, said work was continuing on what would be the 19th round of economic sanctions, aimed at hobbling Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine. The sanctions target Russia’s oil and gas industry and a “shadow fleet” of ships Moscow uses to evade previous sanctions on its oil exports.
Slovakia’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico, is using a national veto to hold up the new measures on Russia, seeking concessions from Brussels on energy supply.
Speaking on Monday, Ms Kallas said she was hopeful a summit of the EU’s 27 leaders on Thursday would land an agreement to approve the fresh sanctions.
EU officials were drawing up “solidarity measures” that would address Belgium’s concerns about the Ukraine reparations loan, she said.
