European Union officials are due to meet Monday morning to try to break an impasse over a proposed embargo on Russian oil imports amid continued resistance from Hungary, according to Bloomberg.
The EU failed to strike a deal on Sunday despite a push to get an agreement before a two-day meeting of the bloc’s leaders starting Monday afternoon in Brussels. Hungary is so far refusing to back a compromise despite proposals aimed at ensuring its Russian oil supplies, according to people familiar with the talks.
Meanwhile, Russia is developing a way to pay its Eurobond debt that would sidestep western financial infrastructure, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was quoted as saying in a newspaper interview. On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited front-line troops in the Kharkiv region in his first trip away from Kyiv since Russia’s invasion.
The EU leaders will declare continued support for Ukraine to help it fend off Russia’s assault and they will discuss how to deal with the impact of the conflict, especially the spike in energy prices and an impending food supply crisis.
According to a draft of the summit conclusions seen by Reuters, leaders will also back the creation of an international fund to rebuild Ukraine after the war, with details to be decided later, and will touch on the legally fraught question of confiscating frozen Russian assets for that purpose.
The leaders will pledge to accelerate work to help Ukraine move its grain out of the country to global buyers via rail and truck as the Russian navy is blocking the usual sea routes and to take steps to faster become independent of Russian energy.