EU nears approval of €90 billion loan for Ukraine, as Zelenskyy pushes for meeting with Putin

THE EU HAS given a preliminary green light to unblocking a €90 billion loan for Kyiv, after a months-long row between Ukraine and Hungary over a damaged pipeline.

Diplomats said Budapest was given 24 hours to sign off definitively as it waits for Russian oil to arrive through the Druzhba pipeline after Kyiv said operations had restarted.

The bitter feud over the pipeline pitted Hungary’s nationalist premier Viktor Orban against Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stalling the vitally needed funds for Kyiv.

Resolving the stand-off would allow Brussels to start paying out the loan in the coming months that Ukraine requires to plug its budget four years into Moscow’s invasion.

“Implementation of our agreement with the European Union to unblock a €90-billion support package for Ukraine over two years is now effectively underway,” Zelenskyy, who is expected to join a summit of EU leaders in Cyprus tomorrow, posted online.

“The unblocking is the right signal under the current circumstances. Russia must end its war.”

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Kremlin-friendly Orban – who suffered a crushing election defeat this month – insisted that he would not budge until Ukraine repaired the pipeline hit by a Russian strike.

Officials said today that Ukraine had restarted pumping oil to Hungary and Slovakia, a day after Zelenskyy announced the repairs were completed.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is pushing for face-to-face talks between Zelenskyy and Putin, Kyiv’s top diplomat said, presenting a potential summit as a way of injecting new momentum into US-led efforts to end the war.

Kyiv has asked Turkey to help facilitate top-level talks and has reached out to other capitals as potential hosts, Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said, adding that Ukraine would consider any venue outside Russia and Belarus.

US-mediated talks over the past year have made little or no headway on key issues, such as the future of four Ukrainian regions Moscow is trying to capture but does not fully control.

With Washington’s attention now gripped by the Iran war, the talks are on ice.

Zelenskyy has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by US president Donald Trump, but Putin has refused.

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The Russian president thinks that time is on his side, that Western military and financial support will fade and that Ukraine’s resistance will eventually collapse, analysts say.

Meanwhile, a grim war of attrition continues along the about 1,250-kilometre front line that snakes along eastern and southern areas of Ukraine.

Western officials and analysts claim Russia is suffering several tens of thousands of battlefield casualties each month, drawing comparisons to the carnage of the First World War.

Independent verification of battlefield casualties and which side has the upper hand is not possible.

Ukraine has developed a domestic arms industry which is increasingly producing long-range drones and missiles capable of striking deep inside Russia.

It has taken aim at Russia’s oil production and manufacturing plants that supply the Russian military.

With reporting by the Press Association