EU leaders meet on Ukraine funding as Moscow and Kiev trade attacks

2025-12-18 12:29:23, Kosova & Bota CNA

European Union leaders are meeting at a summit in Brussels on Thursday to decide how to use frozen Russian assets to meet Ukraine's economic and military needs in the coming years.

Meanwhile, Kiev and Moscow have been exchanging drone attacks overnight.

The EU summit comes a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin sharply criticized the bloc's leaders, using a word that can be translated as "young pigs," and repeated claims that Moscow will achieve its war goals in Ukraine by force if a United States peace initiative fails to produce a deal that meets Russian demands.

Russian forces launched a massive drone attack on the central city of Cherkasy, wounding six people, authorities said. Ihor Taburets, head of the regional military administration, said Russian forces struck critical infrastructure, leaving part of the city without electricity.

The overnight attacks cut off power to more than 180,000 residents in the Cherkasy, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhia, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions, but power had been restored to most of them, said acting Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov.

Russia has been targeting energy and electrical infrastructure since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and its forces have intensified these attacks this fall as the weather has cooled.

Russia has attacked Ukraine's energy infrastructure 4,500 times during 2025, he said.

These attacks are coming at a time when European Union leaders are preparing to decide whether to approve a multi-billion euro loan, backed by frozen Russian assets, to provide financing for Kiev.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Brussels to attend the meeting and told reporters that, without a positive outcome, "Ukraine will have a big problem."

Belgium, where most of the money is held, fears the plan could leave it legally vulnerable, and other countries, including Italy, have also expressed doubts.

"Now we have a simple choice - either money today, or blood tomorrow. And I'm not just talking about Ukraine, I'm talking about Europe," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said as EU leaders arrived for the summit in Brussels.

"This is a decision that we, and only we, must make," he added.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she would not leave the summit without an agreement on how to finance Ukraine over the next two years.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz issued a stark warning earlier this week.

"If we fail to do this, then the European Union's ability to act will be severely damaged for years, if not longer, and we will show the world that we are incapable of standing together and acting at such a crucial moment in our history," he said.

In a speech during an annual Defense Ministry event on December 17, Putin sought to preemptively blame Europe and Ukraine for any failure of peace efforts, saying Russia would take more territory by force if Kiev and European leaders, whom he described as "young pigs," did not approach US proposals appropriately.

"If the opposing side and its foreign backers refuse to engage in substantive discussions, Russia will achieve the liberation of its historical lands by military means," Putin said, rejecting any proposal that requires Moscow to make territorial concessions.

Moscow controls nearly a fifth of Ukraine, and Russian officials have repeatedly said they will not compromise on the five Ukrainian regions that Putin, without any basis, claims are Russian./REL