BRUSSELS, December 3. /TASS/. The European Commission has come up with an alternative financing plan to cover Ukraine's military and civilian needs for the next two years, one that doesn't involve the use of frozen Russian assets, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced.
"We are proposing to cover two-thirds of Ukraine’s financing needs for the next two years - this is 90 bln euros. The remainder will be for international partners to cover. The first option is to raise capital on the capital market, backed by the EU budget, and hand it over to Ukraine as a loan. There needs to be unanimity on this solution," she said at a press conference in Brussels.
The second option, she said, remains using balances of the immobilized Russian assets in the EU for a so-called "reparations loan" to Ukraine. This option would need to be okayed by a qualified majority vote at the EU level, she said.
Both proposals will be published after the EU Council carries out further discussions on them.
The President of the European Commission believes that the expropriation of Russian assets in Europe under the reparations loan scheme will allegedly contribute to ending the conflict in Ukraine. According to her, this would allegedly "greatly help the peace negotiations," as it would "send a signal to Russia that the EU will continue to finance Kiev in the long term," and this would enable Ukraine to negotiate "from a position of strength."
