European Union countries will on Wednesday move to unlock a €90bn loan for Ukraine as the defeated Viktor Orbán exits power in Hungary. The now-caretaker Hungarian prime minister, friendly to Vladimir Putin, had been blocking the loan but will soon be replaced by Peter Magyar, who won a sweeping electoral mandate. Magyar has promised smoother relations with Brussels and criticised Orbán for bowing to Russian influence.
Orbán said that Hungary would lift its objections to the loan as it had “received an indication from Ukraine” via Brussels that Kyiv was ready to restore oil deliveries to Hungary via the damaged Druzhba pipeline that passes through Ukraine from Russia.
“Once oil deliveries are restored, we will no longer stand in the way of approving the loan,” said Orbán – who claimed to be blocking the loan because of the pipeline, but had repeatedly impeded European support for Ukraine well before the pipeline became an issue. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said on Monday that with Orbán’s departure, “we can be reasonably optimistic about the sound progress and implementation” of the EU loan.
Berlin summoned the Russian ambassador on Monday over “direct threats from Russia” against “targets in Germany”. The threats “are an attempt to undermine our support for Ukraine and test our unity”, Germany’s foreign ministry said. “Our response is clear: we will not be intimidated. Such threats and all forms of espionage in Germany are completely unacceptable.” The Russian embassy declined to comment to Agence France Presse, which reported the news.
Russia’s defence ministry last week made a veiled threat as it published a list naming at least three German firms as supplying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for Ukraine, carrying the suggestion they could be targeted. “The European public should not only clearly understand the underlying causes of the threats to their safety, but also know the addresses, as well as the location of ‘Ukrainian’ and ‘joint’ companies producing UAVs and their components for Ukraine in their countries.” It was part of a broader list of 21 companies that Moscow considers either subsidiaries of Ukrainian defence companies or suppliers of key components.
On Monday morning, Russian authorities said they had arrested a German woman accused of being part of an alleged Ukrainian-backed plot to blow up a services facility. Russia’s FSB security agency said the woman was arrested in the Caucasus city of Pyatigorsk with an explosive device in her backpack. The German foreign ministry said it was aware of press reports but would not comment further out of privacy concerns.
The death toll rose to seven on Monday from a mass shooting in Kyiv as a wounded man died in hospital. A Russian-born man opened fire on passersby with an automatic rifle on Saturday before barricading himself in a supermarket with hostages, where he was shot dead by police.
A Europol “hackathon” traced 45 Ukrainian children forcibly deported to Russia, the EU’s law enforcement agency Europol said on Monday. Kyiv says at least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been stolen. The Europol effort saw 40 investigators from 18 countries gather in The Hague for two days last week to use publicly-available information known as Osint (open-source intelligence) to locate some of the children.
“In total, information about 45 children was uncovered and shared with Ukrainian authorities to assist their ongoing investigations,” Europol said. “Some of these children have been adopted by Russian nationals, while others are being held in re-education camps or psychiatric hospitals.” The international criminal court (ICC) has issued war crime arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his “children’s commissioner” Maria Lvova-Belova over the kidnappings.
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