European Union leaders agreed on Friday to provide a massive interest-free loan to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years. The 27-nation bloc’s heads of state had planned to use some of the 210 billion euros ($246 billion) worth of Russian assets that are frozen in Europe, mostly in Belgium. But despite working through the night into Friday morning, they failed to convince Belgium that the country would be protected from any Russian retaliation if it backed the “reparations loan” plan. They settled on an alternative: borrowing $106 billion on capital markets.
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