Zelenskyy’s meeting with Von der Leyen 'grew tense' over funding and slow reforms

Filed 55m ago · Via NV · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in New York turned tense, Bloomberg reports, over funding gaps and the slow pace of Ukrainian parliamentary reforms. Ukraine is asking allies to cover a $30 billion budget hole and wants the EU to speed up disbursement of a €90 billion loan, while warning of Russian escalation risk this winter with thin air defenses.

Ukrainian officials were reportedly angered that the EU agreed to lift sanctions on oligarchs Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman even as it withholds further aid pending progress on curbing the shadow economy and raising tax revenue. The EU also questioned Ukraine's own deficit math and suggested Canada, Norway, and Japan pick up some of the tab instead.

Zelenskyy says the two sides will reconvene in seven to ten days. Meanwhile, von der Leyen has publicly promised Ukraine 'record' support for what she calls the war's harshest winter, and Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi says the energy grid is better prepared than last year, though not invulnerable.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Funding a war and auditing a spreadsheet are two different jobs, and Brussels seems to want to do both at once while the missiles are still coming. Telling a country under siege to tighten its books is fair enough in a boardroom, but it lands differently when the lights might go out from bombing, not budgeting. And lifting sanctions on two oligarchs while lecturing Kyiv about the shadow economy is the kind of move that makes a handshake look like a shrug.

Source: Read the original at NV → Scored: Dreamlike · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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