Another Failure: EUCO Summit Conditions New Ukrainian "Loan" Repayment on Total Victory Over Russia
The European Council summit that took place between December 18-19th in Brussels was declared a major ‘victory’ by the Eurocrats, when in reality it was again a resounding failure for von der Leyen’s rotten regime and her attempt to utilize stolen Russian assets for Ukraine’s war.
The goal was to try to fully seize and use—rather than merely ‘immobilize’—the assets, but instead all they could manage was to create a €90B “loan” for Ukraine—from their own coffers, at that—a far cry from the upwards of €210 they had wanted. And this was all done in the most interesting of manners:
📝: The EUCO summit was a disaster for Ursula von der Leyen and Friedrich Merz. Despite having enough for a qualified majority in EUCO, the opposition of Belgium and 6 other countries meant that Russian assets were not seized. Despite promising to give Ukraine somewhere between 140-210 billion Euros, EUCO decided to give just 90 billion and the cherry on top, strong opposition from France and Italy meant that the Mercosur free trade deal was postponed. The EU is more divided than ever.
Another analysis which explains the distribution of the money in greater detail:
The European Council agreed to grant a 90 billion Euro loan to Ukraine with 0% interest rate from the EU’s budget
The plan to seize Russian assets and use them to fund the loan fell as too many EU member states opposed it during the EUCO meeting.
Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia successfully won the right to not participate in funding this loan, meaning that the 90 billion sum will be split proportionally according to the GDPs of the remaining 24 member states.
While EUCO agreed to provide this loan, the legal mechanism for this loan to be effectively granted to Kiev hasn’t been revealed yet and will take a few more weeks until it is created.
The original plan for the frozen Russian assets (more than $200 billion) was that $95 billion would go toward paying Ukraine’s existing debts to the IMF, ECB, and G7, while the remainder would be used to finance new weapons purchases and other war-related expenses.
In other words, the agreed amount is just enough to keep the country afloat a little longer and prevent bankruptcy, but it does not provide the capacity to go further or to significantly acquire new military capabilities.
But here’s the most important and astounding kicker—the loan is entirely conditioned on Ukraine first receiving reparations from Russia; i.e. only if and when Ukraine receives Russian reparations is Ukraine then obligated to repay the loan. This was explained by several of the top EUCO figures, seen below:
And how can Ukraine force Russia to pay it hundreds of billions in reparations? That’s simple: Win the war.
So, as long as Ukraine wins the war, the EU will get its money back. Sounds like a surefire bet, no?
Facetiousness aside, what this means is two things: Firstly, that the EU has just criminally robbed its citizens of €90B by essentially issuing a fake loan which is in actuality another free grant, given that there is zero chance of its repayment ever happening, since Ukraine has zero chance of ever decisively winning the war in such a way as to somehow “force” Russia into paying reparations—a laughable concept that no one even amongst the EUCO cattle could possibly imagine has a chance of happening.
But the second is the far more significant and sinister point: it legally ties the EU as a party to the war by giving it major stakes for winning the war against Russia. That means from this point forward, the EU is virtually obligated to do everything in its power to defeat Russia on the battlefield in order to win back its citizens’ criminally stolen assets.
Viktor Orban most convincingly enlarged on this point in a must-read post on X:
For the first time in the history of the European Union, 24 member states have jointly granted a war loan to a country outside the Union. This is not a technical detail but a qualitative shift. The logic of a loan is clear: whoever lends money wants it back. In this case, repayment is not tied to economic growth or stabilisation, but to military victory.
For this money to ever be recovered, Russia would have to be defeated. That is not the logic of peace but the logic of war. A war loan inevitably makes its financiers interested in the continuation and escalation of the conflict,because defeat would also mean a financial loss. From this moment on, we are no longer talking merely about political or moral decisions, but about hard financial constraints that push Europe in one direction: into war.
The Brusselian war logic is therefore intensifying. It is not slowing down, not easing, but becoming institutionalised. The risk today is greater than ever before, because the continuation of the war is now coupled with a financial interest.
Hungary is deliberately not stepping onto this dangerous path. We do not take part in initiatives that make participants interested in prolonging the war. We are not looking for a fast track into war, but for an exit towards peace. This is not isolationism, but strategic sobriety. This is in Hungary’s interest and, in the long run, in Europe’s interest as well.
Read that again: “The logic of a loan is clear: whoever lends money wants it back. In this case, repayment is not tied to economic growth or stabilisation, but to military victory.”
The Czechs, Hungarians, and Slovakians managed to successfully extricate themselves from the obligation, leaving the more servile European states to pass the bill onto their increasingly impoverished citizens. That being said, not surprisingly, threats were levied against the thwarting holdouts:
In the end, it has become just the latest in a long line of desperate debacles for the EU regime: billed as “making Russia pay” when in reality, it is again the drowning European citizens footing the bill, as per usual.
AI-political-cartoonists once more nailed it:
Belgium’s increasingly vocal PM Bart De Wever has also taken Germany’s Merz to task and rightfully heralded the success of a few small standout European nations in resisting the oppressive totalitarian policies of the rotten EU regime:
A triumphant Bart De Wever takes a dig at Friedrich Merz for pushing so much the reparations loan.
“Today, we proved that the voice of small and medium-sized member states also counts. Decisions in Europe are not simply driven by the biggest capitals.”
In fact, mainstream news rags are now going after France and Macron for allegedly ‘backstabbing’ Merz by “publicly” going along with Merz’s globalist ambitions to seize €210b in Russian funds, but secretly holding grave reservations about it:
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was making one last push to persuade EU leaders to use €210bn in frozen Russian sovereign assets to help Ukraine when he realised he lacked a critical ally: Emmanuel Macron.
“Macron betrayed Merz, and he knows that there will be a price to pay for that,” said a senior EU diplomat with direct knowledge of Thursday’s talks. “But he’s so weak that he had no other choice but to fold in behind Giorgia Meloni.”
And what is the primary reason for Macron’s sudden cold feet and seeming turnabout on Russia in general, given that he likewise broke rank in announcing that the West should “talk to Russia” after Kaja Kallas caused a ruckus this week admitting she instructs (read: strong-arms) foreign diplomats into breaking off diplomatic ties with Russia?
The answer is simple: France’s economy is collapsing, and Macron knows that crime lord von der Leyen’s phony “loan” would in effect put France on the hook for billions of eurodollars it cannot afford to repay:
The latest has seen France’s public debt balloon to a historic record high 117% of GDP, swelling by a mind-numbing €66B in just three months, after an increase of €71B in the previous quarter:
In fact, beneath the ‘hood’ of von der Leyen’s desperate attempts to shore up Ukraine, there is now more uncertainty and disunity in the EU than ever. From a couple weeks ago:
Italy’s foreign minister said it would be “premature” for his country to participate in a NATO program to buy US weapons for Ukraine in light of ongoing peace negotiations.
“If we reach an agreement and fighting ceases, weapons won’t be needed anymore,” Antonio Tajani, who’s also a deputy prime minister, told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday. “Other things such as security guarantees will be needed.”
Bloomberg even openly admitted—just like in the case of France—Italy’s own about-face came as a result of economic misery and lack of funds:
The remarks are the clearest sign yet that Giorgia Meloni’s government has changed its strategy on Ukraine after running out of funds and weathering tensions within the ruling coalition.
Despite all these developments, we must conclude that at the end of the day Victor Orban remains correct in his assessment: though Europe is plummeting deeper and deeper into the abyss, there is no question that tying the €90B Ukrainian salvation fund to outright victory over Russia was a kind of strategic coup de grace by von der Leyen and her globalist controllers.
By doing so, they have effectively put European countries on the hook and under the knife, as it were. It is a kind of effective blackmail: von der Leyen knows it’s not she that will receive the blowback because she is not beholden to the European citizens directly, given that she’s just an unelected bureau-tyrant. Thus, it’s the individual state puppet leaders under her who will now be forced to go to all extremes to push the war against Russia so that they can get their citizens’ money back without suffering political suicide; von der Leyen herself is effectively shielded against this threat given her totally unaccountable position, with no direct constituents represented by her.
In short, this move puts more pressure on the Euro-puppet-leaders to do everything in their power to aid Ukraine in fighting against Russia “to the last Ukrainian”.
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On a related note, there was another interesting development given that it’s something we just covered in the last paid article—specifically, how the elites twist things by presenting subjective statements as facts.
The example I used was the plethora of recent statements concerning Russia supposedly being ready to ‘wage war against Europe’. A new Reuters piece claimed that US intelligence has recently concluded that Putin intends to “reconquer” not only all of Ukraine, but even “parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire.”
WASHINGTON/PARIS, Dec 19 (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence reports continue to warn that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to capture all of Ukraine and reclaim parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire, six sources familiar with U.S. intelligence said, even as negotiators seek an end to the war that would leave Russia with far less territory.
The fake report is clearly another intel plant made to undermine Trump’s peace efforts and prolong the war. Most interesting in this particular case is the fact that DNI Tulsi Gabbard immediately came out to reject this claimed “intelligence”:
She rightly brings up the famous modern paradox of claiming Russia is a destitute gas station unable to feed its troops or even win back a small percentage of Ukraine, yet is somehow also planning to invade and take over all of Europe. This has again been highlighted with a series of hysterical propaganda pieces in the last few days, which—as hard as it might be to believe—continue outdoing each previous low:
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A few last items:
Putin gave his big end-of-year Q&A—here are a few highlights.
Putin interestingly admitted that Russia lacks the heavy-class drones like Ukraine’s Baba Yaga, but otherwise vastly outnumbers Ukraine in total drones “on every frontline”:
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Interestingly, in his own press conference Zelensky likewise addressed the drone issue, complaining that if Ukraine doesn’t the next massive injection of cash, the state will be forced to vastly reduce its drone production:
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Zelensky also happened to mention that Ukraine is completely out of interceptors for some of the anti-air missile systems it fields:
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On that note, remember the scary new wunderwaffe of the ‘Flamingo’ missile that was sure to devastate Russia any day now? Here Poroshenko reveals that the missile actually doesn’t hit any targets and is purely a “psychological weapon”:
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Putin also threatened Europeans about trying to seize Kaliningrad. He states that if anyone tries to make a move on Kaliningrad, the conflict would grow to a whole new ‘large-scale’ level and that all aggressors will be ‘destroyed’:
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Zelensky also made another very interesting remark. Just last week he or his translator flubbed by saying that NATO “corpses” will be lining the new demarcation line between Russia.
Now he appears to have made a threat—whether intentional or not—against the US president for not supporting Ukraine. He states that Ukraine could join NATO in the future because, while the US does not support this move now, it could do so in the future because “some politicians live, and some die.” Take that to mean what you’d like, but most can agree on what it sounds like:
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Lastly, Putin also updated us on Russian troop counts, which according to him currently number 700,000 in the SMO zone:
Interestingly, Syrsky also revealed in a meeting that Russia deploys around 710,000 in the SMO zone:
For once, we are seeing some agreement in numbers between the two sides.
A new Economist piece highlights and underscores this:
