"Belgian PM Bart De Wever had a testy exchange with a reporter about the three countries not backing the new loan for Ukraine - before joking that he was off to his 'dacha in St Petersburg' - at a press conference in Brussels on Thursday night. "There are still three opt outs, right?" he was asked, about Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary signing off on the loan but on the proviso that they would not contribute. "What's your problem? Three opt outs. We've had that before. Every time we prolong the sanctions, there's an there's an opt out. There's someone saying, okay, you can go ahead, but without my support and we still can go ahead. We found a solution for the financing of Ukraine and we were unanimous. Three countries don't want to be implicated. Okay, fine. But we're there. That's good. But now I have to go to my dacha in Saint Petersburg, where my neighbour is Depardieu. And across the street there is Assad." he finished. De Wever took aim earlier in the briefing at a reporter from Politico who he said had called him 'Russia's most valuable asset'. That exchange is also available on this site. It followed his objections to the plan to use frozen Russian assets to back a loan for Ukraine - which ultimately failed to pass amid concerns from many countries about the legality, the shared risk, and corruption in Ukraine."