Closing summary and best wishes for Christmas & New Year period
… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today!
EU leaders have pledged a €90bn loan for Ukraine to meet urgent financial needs, but failed to agree on the preferred option for many of securing that loan against Russia’s frozen assets in the bloc (10:46, 15:44).
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed the move, saying it sent “a signal to the Russians that there is no point in continuing the war” as Ukraine had the means to defend itself (13:03, 16:14).
Belgium’s prime minister Bart De Wever hailed “a stable, legally robust and financially credible” solution adopted by the EU leaders as a result of late-night compromise after his country repeatedly declined to back the preferred proposal for an assets-backed reparations loan (11:51) – getting praise from his cat (15:57).
Most EU leaders have welcomed the compromise solution and offered their cautious backing for the scheme, agreed at an all-night meeting in Brussels (8:44, 9:23, 11:20, 13:14, 13:30, 14:26)
Leaders of the three central European countries which, in a EU first, opted-out of the new mechanism have welcomed the fact they are not part of the new mechanism (9:28, 9:35).
Ukraine says it has attacked a Russian “shadow fleet” tanker with aerial drones 1,250 miles (2,000km) from its borders, in the first such strike in the Mediterranean Sea since Moscow’s full-scale invasion nearly four years ago.
Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin struck a familiar hardline tone on the war in Ukraine in his at times bizarre (13:50) end-of-year press conference.
Putin insisted that Russia was not a threat (13:08) and was open to a peace deal under certain maximalist conditions (12:13), and it was Ukraine and the west’s fault there isn’t one (10:21) – and their responsibility to move towards it (11:57, 15:03).
The Russian leader also said the EU’s original plan for using frozen Russian amounts would have amounted to a “robbery” as he repeated his warnings about a possible legal challenge (10:55).
And that’s all from me, Jakub Krupa, for today.
As I sign off for Christmas, please accept my best wishes for the Christmas and New Year period to all of you, wherever you read this blog from.
In the meantime, if you have any tips, comments or suggestions, or just want to send your Christmas wishes, you can email me at [email protected].
I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.
Thank you for 2025, and see you in 2026!
Updated
US 'made good progress' in Ukraine talks, but 'ways to go' with 'hardest issues' discussed last, Rubio says
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has been answering questions from journalists in the last half hour, and he was asked about the latest on Ukraine.
He said the US administration invested “a tremendous amount of time and energy” in ending this war, and is “trying to figure out what can Ukraine live with and what can Russia live with.”
“[We want to] sort of identify what both sides positions are and see if we can sort of drive them towards each other to some agreement,” he said.
“A negotiated settlement requires two things, both sides to get something out of it, and both sides to give something. And we’re trying to figure out, what can Russia give and what do they expect to get? What can Ukraine give and what can Ukraine expect to get? In the end, the decision will be up to Ukraine, and up to Russia will not be up to the United States.”
He added that “this is not about imposing a deal on anybody,” but trying to find where interests can “overlap.”
“I think we’ve made progress, but we have ways to go, and obviously the hardest issues are always the last issues.”
Updated
