€90bn loan has been held up by resistance from Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán; US and Ukrainian negotiators to meet on Saturday. What we know on day 1,486 The EU will find ways to pay out the promised €90bn ($104.2bn) loan to Ukraine despite Hungary’s ongoing resistance, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said early on Friday. “We will deliver one way or the other,” von der Leyen told reporters after a summit in Brussels, where EU leaders failed to convince Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to lift his blockade on the vital EU loan to Ukraine. EU leaders earlier failed to persuade Orbán to lift his block on a massive loan to support Ukraine’s war effort at summit talks on Thursday, leaving the much-needed funding in limbo. Moscow’s closest partner in the bloc, the nationalist prime minister has long resisted helping Kyiv to repel Russia’s invasion, stalling EU aid and repeated rounds of sanctions. The Kremlin said on Thursday that talks between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv on ending the war in Ukraine were on “situational pause” after the start of the Iran war, but Ukraine’s president said new discussions were expected this weekend. Ukrainian and US negotiators will meet in the United States on Saturday in a bid to revive stalled talks on Russia’s invasion , Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday ordered the release of 250 political prisoners as part of a deal with Washington that lifted some US sanctions , the latest step in the isolated leader’s effort to improve ties with the West. Lukashenko pardoned the prisoners after meeting with US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Belarus, John Coale, in the Belarus capital of Minsk. International Monetary Fund staff are in Kyiv this week to meet with Ukrainian authorities about how they plan to meet their commitments under a new $8.1bn lending program approved last month, IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack said on Thursday. Kozack said IMF staff would also meet with members of the Ukrainian parliament to discuss fiscal reforms and tax changes required under the IMF program. A pro-Kremlin figure who unexpectedly denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine in a social media post this week that went viral has been placed in a psychiatric facility , the hospital said on Thursday. Ilya Remeslo made a career denouncing Putin’s critics until he became one himself, posting a manifesto late on Tuesday to his 90,000 followers on Telegram entitled: “Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin.” As Russia’s war rages on in Ukraine, the Red Cross said Thursday it was facilitating the exchange of about 1,000 bodies each month between the sides , while “thousands and thousands” of dead remain unidentified. Just back from a visit to Ukraine, International Committee of the Red Cross director-general Pierre Krahenbuhl said he was struck by “the scale and the scope of the consequences when these military means are deployed between states”. Continue reading...