The EU has agreed to provide Ukraine with a new loan worth about $44.48 billion until the end of 2024, regardless of US participation.
The Financial Times reported this news citing three European officials, APA quoted TASS as saying.
Accordingly, such a unilateral step may have been taken out of fear that Brussels would prevent Budapest from providing the guarantees it needs to participate in the loan repayment with Russian assets frozen by the United States. The Orban government is trying to postpone the decision until after the US presidential elections, but the EU must now prepare an alternative to ensure that the aid reaches Kiev by the end of 2024.
‘It is urgent to adopt a proposal by the end of October so that the Union loan can be disbursed in tranches before the end of 2024,’ the newspaper quoted the draft proposal as saying.
Accordingly, the allocation of the new loan would be considered as an extension of aid, requiring the support of a majority of EU member states instead of unanimity, which would help to overcome Hungary’s veto.
At a summit in Italy on 13 June, G7 leaders agreed to allocate $50 billion to Ukraine from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets until the end of 2024. The text states that Russian sovereign assets under the jurisdiction of Western financial institutions will be frozen ‘until Russia stops its aggression and pays for the damage caused to Ukraine’. On 14 June, a representative of the Washington administration told a briefing that Ukraine could treat the $50 billion loan from the G7 countries as a grant and would not have to make any repayments.
