Stakes High, Europe Races to Save Its Financing Plan for Ukraine

European leaders had hoped to flex their collective muscles with a huge pot of money to fund Ukraine’s war effort, one so large that it would put Kyiv in a strong negotiating position with Moscow.
That plan remains in jeopardy, and what was meant to be a show of strength is at risk of turning into a display of messy weakness when Europe is already floundering for influence on Ukraine, repeatedly left out of peace talks brokered by the United States.
At the core of the plan is as much as 210 billion euros ($244 billion) in Russian state assets, frozen in Belgium, that European leaders have been hoping for months to use to make a giant loan to Ukraine. Agreement on how to do this has remained elusive.
In a last-ditch effort to make the plan work, European Union policymakers on Wednesday unveiled an updated version of the proposal that includes legal workarounds that will make it easier to enact the plan without support from every member state.
The ideas, which will be considered at a meeting of European leaders in Brussels on Dec. 18, could help the bloc overcome opposition from Hungary. But Belgium, where the money is held, remains skeptical, and diplomats and analysts have begun to acknowledge that policymakers could find themselves forced to offer Ukraine a more modest financial package.
The European Union laid out a less ambitious option on Wednesday, in case the frozen asset idea does not work.
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