Belgium PM's loan plea

BELGIUM insisted on Thursday that its European Union partners must provide ironclad guarantees that it will be protected from Russian retaliation before it would back a massive loan for Ukraine.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded for a decision now to keep Ukraine afloat in the new year. At a summit in Brussels with exceptionally high stakes for both the EU and Ukraine, the 27-nation bloc’s leaders are set to decide on whether to use tens of billions of euros in frozen Russian assets to underwrite a loan to meet Ukraine's military and financial needs over the next two years.

The bulk of the assets - some 193 billion euros ($227 billion) as of September - are held in the Brussels-based financial clearing house Euroclear. Russia’s Central Bank sued Euroclear last week.