Wars 2022 02/24 Monitoring Russian and Ukraine War.

[Saif]

Ukraine welcomes €90bn EU loan, despite lack of deal on Russian assets

Ukraine thanked the European Union on Friday for deciding to provide it with 90 billion euros ($105.46 billion) of support over the next two years - even if the bloc failed to agree on an ambitious plan to finance it using frozen Russian assets. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the EU had bac

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Ukraine welcomes €90bn EU loan, despite lack of deal on Russian assets

REUTERS
Published :
Dec 19, 2025 23:21
Updated :
Dec 19, 2025 23:21

Paramedics assist a resident during an evacuation from an apartment building hit by a Russian air strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine Dec 17, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Stringer

Ukraine thanked the European Union on Friday for deciding to provide it with 90 billion euros ($105.46 billion) of support over the next two years - even if the bloc failed to agree on an ambitious plan to finance it using frozen Russian assets.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the EU had backed away from the plan to use its frozen assets because it would have faced serious repercussions.

The stakes for finding money for Kyiv were high because without the EU's financial help, Ukraine would run out of money in the second quarter of next year and most likely lose the war to Russia, which the EU fears would bring the threat of Russian aggression against the bloc closer.

"This is significant support that truly strengthens our resilience," Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on the Telegram app after the agreement was reached at a summit of EU leaders.

The decision followed hours of discussions on the proposal for an unprecedented loan based on Russia's assets, which turned out to be too politically demanding to resolve at this stage. Instead, the EU will borrow cash.

'DAYLIGHT ROBBERY'

Putin said the initial plan to use Russia's frozen assets to back the loan would have amounted to "daylight robbery."

"Why can't this robbery be carried out? Because the consequences could be grave for the robbers," he said during his annual end-of-year press conference.

"This isn't just a blow to their image; it's an undermining of trust in the euro zone, and the fact that many countries, not just Russia, but primarily oil-producing countries, store their gold and foreign exchange reserves in the euro zone."

GERMANY FAILED TO CONVINCE

The main difficulty for the reparation-loan plan was providing Belgium, where 185 billion euros of the total Russian assets in Europe are held, with sufficient guarantees against financial and legal risks from potential Russian retaliation for the release of the money to Ukraine.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who had pushed hard for a reparations loan backed by the frozen Russian assets, argued this was still a good deal.

"This is good news for Ukraine and bad news for Russia and this was our intention," he said.

'PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD'

Ukraine said this was still hugely welcome.

"Indeed, there are moments when one should keep in mind that 'Perfect is the enemy of good'. It was a long night for European leaders but they were able to come up with a workable result," said Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya.

Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro research at ING in Frankfurt, also welcomed the deal.

"If Europe hadn’t found a solution, I must say, it would have been a symbolic disaster," he said, adding: “I think there should be enough investor appetite for the new loan."

Meanwhile, on the summit's other major topic, Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed confidence that the EU would be able to sign a contentious free trade agreement with South American bloc Mercosur in January, despite insufficient backing at the summit.​

 

[Saif]

https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/world/europe/russia-hits-ports-bridge-in-escalating-strikes-on-ukraines-odesa-region

Russia hits ports, bridge in escalating strikes on Ukraine's Odesa region

REUTERS
Published :
Dec 20, 2025 19:44
Updated :
Dec 20, 2025 19:44

A firefighter works at the site of a Russian missile and drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Odesa region, Ukraine in this handout picture released December 20, 2025. Photo : Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Odesa region/Handout via REUTERS

Russia attacked the southern Ukrainian port of Pivdennyi on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, as it ramped up strikes on the Odesa region along the Black Sea including energy facilities and a critical route to the Moldova border.

Russia has unleashed an almost continuous drone and missile campaign against a region where ports critical to Ukraine's foreign trade and fuel supplies operate, after Moscow threatened to cut "Ukraine off from the sea".

Airstrikes have escalated even as the US pursues an uphill diplomatic drive to broker an end to the war. US negotiators were set to meet Russian officials in Florida on Saturday for the latest attempt to coax a deal out of Russia and Ukraine.

Saturday's attack on Pivdennyi port hit reservoirs, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said on the Telegram messaging app, a day after a missile strike on the port that killed eight people and injured at least 30.

On Thursday and Friday, Russian forces targeted a bridge on the Dniester river estuary near the village of Mayaky, northeast of Pivdennyi, Ukrainian officials said.

The bridge connects parts of the region fragmented by the undulating sea coast and river estuaries, and is the only main route towards Moldova's border crossings to the west.

"Without significant success on the (battle) front, the enemy is trying to terrorise civilians to create internal destabilisation. These plans are clear, and we are effectively countering them together with the people of Odesa," deputy presidential administration head Viktor Mykyta said on Telegram.

Russian officials have not commented on the attacks.

Ukrainian authorities temporarily re-routed passengers to other crossings, including by water, into Moldova. Mykyta said Ukraine would create as many alternative crossings as necessary, "no matter how hard the enemy tries to destroy the connection".

Last week, one of the war's biggest Russian air attacks on the strategic Black Sea region damaged energy facilities and prompted a blackout in Odesa, plunging hundreds of thousands of civilians into darkness for days.

Airstrikes on ports damaged three Turkish-flagged vessels in December.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to cut Ukraine's access to the Black Sea in retaliation for Kyiv's maritime drone attacks on Moscow's sanctions-busting "shadow-fleet" tankers.

Ukraine says those vessels are used to transport oil, Russia's main revenue source for funding its almost four-year-old full-scale invasion of its neighbour.​

 

[Saif]

Ukraine battles attempted Russian breakthrough in border region

The Ukrainian army was battling an attempted Russian breakthrough in the Sumy region, it said on Sunday, following reports that Moscow forcibly moved 50 people from a border village there.

www.newagebd.net

Ukraine battles attempted Russian breakthrough in border region
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 22 December, 2025, 01:09

The Ukrainian army was battling an attempted Russian breakthrough in the Sumy region, it said on Sunday, following reports that Moscow forcibly moved 50 people from a border village there.

This marks a renewed Russian advance in the part of the region previously largely spared from intense ground fighting since Ukraine regained land there in a swift 2022 counter-offensive.

‘Fighting is currently on-going in the village of Grabovske,’ Ukraine’s joint task force said, adding the troops were ‘making efforts to drive the occupiers back into Russian territory.’

It has also refuted media reports saying that the Moscow troops were in the neighbouring Ryasne village.

Earlier on Sunday, the Ukrainian rights ombudsman said the enemy’s troops forcibly moved about 50 people from Grabovske to Russia.

On Thursday, Russian soldiers ‘illegally detained about 50 civilians — residents of the village of Grabovske in the Sumy region,’ ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said.

He added that they were held incommunicado in poor conditions, before the Russians ‘forcibly took them to the territory of the Russian Federation’ on Saturday.

AFP is unable to verify the claims, and there was no official Russian comment on the matter.

However, on Saturday, the Russian army said it had captured the village of Vysoke, a few miles from Grabovske.

Sumy military administration said on Saturday it evacuated residents from the border communities in the area, who previously refused to leave, in armoured vehicles.

The breakthrough attempt comes as Russia slowly but steadily gains ground in eastern Ukraine amid renewed talks to end the four-year war.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin on Sunday denied that three-way talks between Ukraine, Russia and the United States were on the cards, as diplomats gathered in Miami for talks on ending the conflict.

A day earlier, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had said that Washington had mooted the trilateral format, which would mark Moscow and Kyiv’s first face-to-face negotiations in half a year, but expressed scepticism that they would lead to progress.

‘At present, no one has seriously discussed this initiative, and to my knowledge, it is not in preparation,’ Russian president Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters, according to Russian news agencies.

After revealing the US three-way proposal, Zelensky told journalists on Saturday that he was ‘not sure that anything new could come of it’, and urged the United States to step up pressure on Russia to end the war.

But the Ukrainian leader struck a more upbeat note on Sunday, adding that ‘constructive’ talks between US, European and Ukrainian negotiators were ‘moving at a fairly rapid pace’, while cautioning that ‘much depends on whether Russia feels the need to end the war for real’.

‘Unfortunately, the real signals coming from Russia remain only negative: assaults along the frontline, Russian war crimes in border areas, and continued strikes against our infrastructure,’ Zelensky posted on X.

Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev arrived on Saturday in Miami, where Ukrainian and European teams have also been gathering since Friday for the negotiations, mediated by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Dmitriev ‘will return to Moscow, make his report, and we will discuss what to do next’, Uskakov said.

The top Kremlin aide also told Russian journalists Sunday that he had ‘not seen’ the revised US proposal to end the conflict.

Washington last month stunned Ukraine and its European allies by presenting a 28-point plan to end the war widely seen as caving in to the Kremlin’s key demands, which has since been redrafted following Kyiv and Europe’s involvement.

While little is known of the latest version, Kyiv is likely to be expected to surrender some territory — a prospect resented by many Ukrainians — in exchange for US security guarantees.

Moscow’s troops have been steadily advancing at the eastern front in recent months, with Putin on Friday hailing the Russian army’s territorial gains — and threatening more in the coming weeks.

The last time Ukrainian and Russian envoys held official direct talks was in July in Istanbul, which led to prisoner swaps but little else in the way of concrete progress to stop the fighting.

Russian and European involvement in Miami marks a step forward from before, when the Americans held separate negotiations with each side in different locations.

But the extremely strained relations between the two sides after nearly four years of Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II have cast doubt over the prospect of direct Ukraine-Russia talks.

Moscow, which sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, also argues that European involvement in the talks only hinders the process.

According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in an interview published Sunday, Putin however expressed his willingness to talk with France’s Emmanuel Macron on the conflict.

Macron held several calls with Putin in the run-up to and during the early months of the conflict, in an attempt to press the veteran Kremlin leader on the war.

Putin has ‘expressed readiness to engage in dialogue with Macron’, Peskov told state news agency RIA Novosti.

‘Therefore, if there is mutual political will, then this can only be assessed positively.’

In response, Macron’s office said Putin’s stated willingness to talk was ‘welcome’, but stressed that any discussion with Moscow would be conducted ‘in full transparency’ with Zelensky and European allies.​

 

[Saif]

https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/world/russian-air-attack-on-ukraine-kills-three-and-sparks-sweeping-outages

Russian air attack on Ukraine kills three and sparks sweeping outages

REUTERS
Published :
Dec 23, 2025 19:28
Updated :
Dec 23, 2025 19:28

A medic assists a resident as she leaves her apartment building that was hit by a Russian drone, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine December 23, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Russian missile and drone attacks killed at least three Ukrainians including a child on Tuesday, triggering widespread emergency power cuts and prompting neighbouring Poland to scramble jets.

The attacks, days after another round of U.S.-led talks to end the nearly four-year-old war, hit energy facilities in western regions the hardest, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.

Poland, a NATO member bordering western Ukraine, said Polish and allied aircraft were deployed to protect Polish airspace after Russian strikes targeted areas near the border.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had targeted at least 13 regions as Ukrainians prepared to celebrate Christmas with their families in an attack that showed Russian President Vladimir Putin was not serious about peace talks.

“Putin still cannot accept that he must stop killing,” Zelenskiy wrote on X. “And that means that the world is not putting enough pressure on Russia. Now is the time to respond.”

YOUNG CHILD KILLED

A four-year-old child was killed in the central Zhytomyr region, another person in Khmelnytskyi in western Ukraine and a third person outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where local officials said at least five were also wounded.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had attacked Ukrainian energy and military facilities and captured two villages along the front line in Ukraine. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv, which often disputes Russian reports of territorial gains.

Moscow has stepped up strikes on Ukrainian energy and logistics to boost pressure on Kyiv as it seeks to alter the terms of a U.S.-backed peace deal. Ukraine has targeted Russian energy exports.

A Ukrainian overnight drone attack sparked a fire at an industrial facility in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, the region’s governor, Vladimir Vladimirov, said. Authorities also reported a fire at the fuel oil supply pipeline at the port of Taman in Krasnodar region, saying it had been put out.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 635 drones and 38 missiles, most of which had been downed.

Ukraine’s energy ministry said all regions were experiencing emergency power outages, adding that nearly all consumers in the western Rivne, Ternopil and Khmelnytskyi regions were without power early on Tuesday.

Critical and energy infrastructure was damaged in the northern Chernihiv, western Lviv and southern Odesa regions, local authorities said. Private energy firm DTEK said one of its thermal power plants had suffered damage.

Weekend peace talks in Miami brought together U.S. officials with Ukrainian and European delegations, alongside separate contacts with Russian representatives, as Washington tested the scope for a settlement.

Russia has demanded that Ukraine cede its eastern Donbas region and significantly restrict its military capabilities before it stops fighting, terms which Zelenskiy has rejected.​