The French leader reportedly refused to support the German chancellor\u2019s push to tap frozen Russian assets to finance Kiev<\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron \u201cbetrayed\u201d Friedrich Merz by failing to back the German chancellor\u2019s push to steal Russian assets frozen in the EU to fund Ukraine, the Financial Times has claimed.
\nEarlier this week, EU leaders failed to agree on the European Commission\u2019s controversial proposal to use Russia’s immobilized central bank funds to finance Kiev\u2019s military and economy.
\nOn Sunday, the FT, citing an anonymous senior EU diplomat, reported that \u201cMacron betrayed Merz, and he knows that there will be a price to pay for that.\u201d According to the publication, while the French president did not publicly object to the so-called \u2018reparations loan\u2019 proposal, Macron privately called its legality into question. Moreover, his team reportedly indicated that France, saddled with mounting debt, would be unlikely to issue guarantees in case the impounded assets had to be returned to Russia.
\nThe FT claimed that Macron joined Belgium, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic in opposing the plan, thus \u201ckilling the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
EU tampering with Ukraine peace talks \u2013 Putin aide<\/p>\n
EU leaders instead approved an interest-free \u20ac90 billion ($105 billion) loan to Ukraine backed by the bloc\u2019s budget. Picking up the tab will be taxpayers in all EU member states except for Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, which opted out.
\nAmid escalating divisions within the bloc, \u201cdisunity between Merz and Macron\u201d has become increasingly apparent, according to the FT.
\nSpeaking during an end-of-year Q&A session on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that \u201cwhatever [the EU steals] and however they do it, they will have to pay it back someday.\u201d
\nMoscow has initiated arbitration proceedings against Euroclear, a Belgium-based depository where the bulk of the frozen Russian assets is being held.
\nIn November, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Western Europe had lost the right to have a say in the Ukraine crisis and had effectively \u201cremoved itself\u201d from the negotiations due to its obstinate warmongering.
\nIn light of US President Donald Trump\u2019s mediation efforts to end the Ukraine conflict that culminated in a peace roadmap proposal, EU member states scrambled to water down the draft.
\nMoscow has characterized Western European nations\u2019 stance as \u201ccompletely unconstructive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The French leader reportedly refused to support the German chancellor\u2019s push to tap frozen Russian assets to finance Kiev French President Emmanuel Macron \u201cbetrayed\u201d Friedrich Merz by failing to back…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}