After a marathon summit, leaders agreed on a plan to provide funding for Ukraine based on EU joint debt, although three countries refused to sign up. That wasn’t the plan most EU countries had been pushing for, which was to use frozen Russian assets to help Kyiv’s war effort.

European Union officials wanted to use Russia’s frozen assets to back a major loan to Ukraine. Unable to overcome opposition, they settled on another way to lend the money.

About 1,000 honking tractors rolled into the Belgian capital to heap pressure on an EU leaders’ summit where the deal’s fate hung in the balance

European Union leaders will try to overcome staunch resistance to both a funding plan for Ukraine and a massive trade deal with South America during a summit in Brussels starting Thursday — insisting that the bloc’s reputation is on the line.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Brussels on Thursday 18 December, where a summit of European Union leaders has just started. Source: Dmytro Lytvyn, Zelenskyy's communications adviser,

Hungarian leader Viktor Orban said the EU proposal is ‘dead’ and will be rejected in a vote at the Brussels summit