High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell hopes that a decision will be found this week to unlock another tranche of EUR 500 million in military support for Ukraine.
He said this at a press conference after a meeting of the Council at the level of defense ministers of the member countries of the European Union in Brussels on Tuesday.
Borrell said this issue is still under discussion. He said any hurdles to approve this amount will be overcome this week and it was the subject of discussion at the technical meeting of the committee.
As it is known, the allocation of this amount is blocked by Hungary, arguing that one of its banks is on the Ukrainian “black list.”
The European Union has already allocated nearly 50 billion euros in military, financial, economic and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, an additional 500 million euros in military aid has been approved, and the Union states intend to continue supporting Kiev, EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrel said.
“I can tell you that we will continue our support for Ukraine,” the EU high representative for foreign affairs said at the end of an EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting Monday in Brussels at which member state ministers discussed aid for the Ukrainian armed forces.
“Today we reached a political agreement on the seventh tranche of military assistance for an additional 500 million euros and another 45 million for measures to enable Ukrainian soldiers to receive training as part of our military support mission,” Borrell continued.
The European diplomacy chief noted preparations for an EU-Ukraine summit on February 3, “the first summit since Ukraine received candidate status” for EU membership.
The European Union will provide an additional EUR 500 million in military assistance to Ukraine, bringing the total amount of aid to EUR 2 billion, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said on Friday.
He said the European Union would provide a new tranche of EUR 500 million to provide military assistance to Ukraine, thus, bringing the total amount to EUR 2 billion.
The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, believes that the EU could withdraw Russian reserves stored in Europe and send them to the restoration of Ukraine.
“I would strongly advocate for it, as it is completely logical,” he said in an interview published in The Financial Times on Monday.
“The European Commission has said that restoring Ukraine could cost hundreds of billions of euros, and European capitals could consider seizing Russian assets frozen abroad to help pay for Ukraine’s rebuilding (…)”, the FT quoted the words as saying. Borrell.
At the same time, Borrell drew an analogy with Afghanistan – the United States took control of billions of dollars of assets belonging to the Central Bank of Afghanistan in order to possibly use them in part to compensate victims of terrorism, as well as to provide humanitarian assistance to the country.
“We have money in our pockets, and someone has to explain to me why it’s good to do this with Afghan money, but not with Russian money,” Borrell said.
“EU representatives have considered whether it is possible in any way to direct Russia’s reserves to the reconstruction of Ukraine, but Brussels has not moved forward with any political proposals on this topic,” the publication notes.
The FT recalls that “shortly after the start of the conflict, the EU and its allies froze hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign assets of the Central Bank of Russia.”
BORRELL, EU, FINANCIAL TIMES, REBUILD UKRAINE, RUSSIAN FUNDS
