EU leaders agree Ukraine loan
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
European Union leaders have agreed to loan Ukraine $100bn to cover the cost of its military and public services, but they failed to reach on a deal on using frozen Russian assets.
They instead opted to secure the oan against EU borrowing rather than Russian assets. What signal does that send to Moscow?
Also in the programme: We'll hear from the Ukrainian widows cut off from compensation because their soldier husbands took their own lives; excitement builds in Morocco as it prepares to host Africa's biggest football tournament; why the boxing influencer Jake Paul may be risking more than his reputation in tonight's big fight.
(Photo shows Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen, European Council president Antonio Costa, and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen at the EU Council Summit in Brussels, Belgium on 19 December 2025. Credit: Olivier Hoslet/EPA)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.6 | Hello and welcome to NewsAff from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.8 | We're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:14.7 | I'm James Menendez. |
| 0:16.2 | And we're going to begin once again in Brussels, |
| 0:18.3 | where there will be plenty of politicians and officials |
| 0:20.7 | with dark rings under their eyes today. The summit of EU leaders that we were talking about |
| 0:25.9 | on the program yesterday ended up going on for about 16 hours, only finally breaking up in the early |
| 0:31.5 | hours of this morning. But there was a resolution to the big question on the table. Where would |
| 0:37.0 | the EU find the money to keep Ukraine afloat in the coming year? |
| 0:41.4 | And would it involve liquidating more than $200 million worth of frozen Russian assets? |
| 0:48.0 | Well, the short answer to that last one was no. |
| 0:50.9 | But they did reach a different agreement, as set out by the European Council President |
| 0:55.3 | Antonio Costa. As a matter of urgency, we will provide a loan backed by the European Union budget. |
| 1:04.2 | This will address the urgent financial needs of Ukraine. And Ukraine will only repay this loan once Russia pays reparations. |
| 1:16.3 | So, a loan of $105 billion to fill an estimated funding gap in Ukraine of $160 billion over the next |
| 1:25.0 | two years, money it needs to keep its economy a military running. |
| 1:29.8 | Alexander Mureshko is chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Ukrainian Parliament. |
| 1:34.4 | He's from President Zelensky's party, and this was his reaction to the deal. |
| 1:38.7 | For us, it's important to receive a Russian frozen sovereign essence. |
| 1:43.7 | This money should be given to the victim of |
| 1:45.8 | the aggression as a reparation. So we continue to hope, we continue to fight. But at the same time, |
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