Europe fails to reach deal on Ukraine, rearmament after emergency talks end without agreement

Europe remains divided on how to support Ukraine and shore up its defenses in the face of Russian aggression, as emergency summit talks ended without a consensus on Thursday.A statement on Ukraine was signed by all but one of the 27 EU members with a lone country — believed to be Hungary — holding out.As leaders pledged to ramp up defense spending, the main European powers couldn’t agree on what exactly that support for Ukraine might look like and how Europe should adapt to what many see as a new world order under President Trump.“Europe is weak without the United States,” Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov told reporters on Thursday.He added that he hoped “the US remains committed to our collective security, which is based on shared values.”However, there was a major point of contention between the European nations over the seizure of some $227 billion in frozen Russian central bank reserves that have been held in Europe’s financial system since the start of the Ukraine war.Ukraine — as well as some of its neighboring Eastern European countries, such as Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — have called for the seizing of Russia’s money to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction.But officials from Belgium, France and Germany have warned that several legal obstacles stand in the way and that such a move could undermine confidence in the euro currency.“I advocate great caution when it comes to those frozen assets,” Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever said at Thursday’s summit in his country.“Countries that are already calling for the confiscation of those funds, they should be well aware of the economic risks they are taking.

That is something that can really shock the world financial order.You should not take it lightly,” he warned.So far, around $50 billion in assistance has been given to Ukraine using the accumulating interest on Russia’s frozen assets by the G7 group of nations.That money will...