Merz dashes to Brussels for talks with De Wever and VDL on Russian assets

Source: Politico

EU leaders are scheduled to discuss the initiative in Brussels on Dec. 18.

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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will arrive Friday in Brussels in a bid to convince Belgium's leadership to back a 165 billion reparations loan to Ukraine using the cash value of frozen Russian state assets held on Belgian soil.

"Chancellor Friedrich Merz will travel to Belgium tomorrow evening for a dinner meeting to speak privately with Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen," a German government spokesperson told POLITICO.

Merz scrapped his travel plans to Oslo to make the trip to the EU capital after the Commission proposed a financial package to fund Ukraine's defense against Russian forces. Time is of the essence, as Kyiv's war chest is expected to run bare in April.

De Wever continues to oppose the initiative, as the lion's share of the assets is under the stewardship of Brussels-based financial depository, Euroclear. He fears that Russia will retaliate against Belgium at home and abroad, and is demanding ironclad financial guarantees from EU capitals before he even considers backing the Commission's proposal.

Read more: https://www.politico.eu/article/merz-heads-to-brussels-for-crunch-talks-with-belgian-pm-over-russian-assets/

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Even "ironclad financial guarantees" may not be enough to sway De Wever, who is seen as being more sympathetic to (or cowardly toward) Putin than the vast majority of other EU leaders. His deep qualms have included his baldly stated conviction that Russia's triumph in Ukraine is inevitable and provocative acts will only incite Putin's wrath toward the European partners, as if Putin wasn't already wrathfui enough and engaged in active measures against them.

There are other options for funding Ukraine through its upcoming financial shortfall, one of which the UK's Starmer is actively pursuing at the moment, but using the frozen Russian assets in some way (e.g., security against a loan) would not only feel like a glimmer of justice, it could derail the schemes of Witkoff, Kushner, Dmitriev, Putin and Trump and their other partners in crime to release (and ultimately) grab the vast amounts of Russian funds as soon as a hypothetical "deal" is forced on Ukraine, leaving Europe to carry the bulk of the responsibility for reconstructing Ukraine while Trump & co. skim off 50% of the profits from the disputed Russian assets for their own purposes.

For some background on the disgusting US and Russian moneygrubbing weasels behind all this scheming and the long-term relationships between them, see this GD post: