Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did his best to project a wry optimism when he spoke to reporters at the EU summit yesterday.
Ukraine's survival depends hugely on Mr Zelensky finding favour with US President Donald Trump, but such favour is an on-again, off-again mystery.
It had been reported that in his White House meeting last week, Mr Trump had told the Ukrainian president to do a deal or be "destroyed" by Russia.
Russian president Vladimir Putin, it seemed, had got to the US president first with a phone call ahead of Mr Zelensky’s Oval Office encounter.
Long-range US Tomahawk missiles, which had been teasingly on offer, were out; a Trump-Putin summit in Budapest was in.
Once again, EU leaders were rallying to Mr Zelensky’s side.
Yet yesterday it looked like the pendulum was swinging back. Ahead of the Brussels summit, Mr Trump had suddenly cancelled the Budapest summit and slapped sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, the two main Russian crude oil producers.
"So, the result of this (White House) meeting (was)," President Zelensky told the Brussels press corp, "we have sanctions on Russian energy. We don't have a meeting in Hungary without Ukraine, and we have not yet got Tomahawks. This is the result. I think - not bad. Each day brings something (new). Maybe tomorrow we will have Tomahawks. I don't know."
But the Ukrainian president’s mind was no doubt on ongoing deliberations close by within the Europa Building, where EU leaders were continuing to grapple with how to convert €140 billion of immobilised Russian assets into a loan for Ukraine.
Mr Zelensky, fresh from addressing EU leaders, admitted the issue was "not simple" but stressed that it was in Europe’s interest as well as Ukraine’s that the country has stable financial and military support for the next two years.
Ukrainian and EU officials increasingly stress, as Europe embarks on a drive to boost its military defences ahead of a 2030 deadline, that EU and NATO militaries have a lot to learn from Ukraine’s battlefield experience, particularly at the cutting edge of drone warfare.
"We have technologies," the president said.
"We are ready to share with the countries who helped us during this war."
Therefore, converting Russian assets was a win-win for both and would put more pressure on Mr Putin to end the war.
Not so fast, said Belgian prime minister Bart de Wever. Belgium has reluctantly found itself the centre of attention in blocking the loan, saying it would be "insane" for the country to singlehandedly take on the legal and financial risks of seizing Russian assets.
Following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the EU, G7 and other countries jointly froze some €300bn in Russian central bank assets held overseas. Because 62% of those assets (an estimated €180bn) has been held in the Belgian-registered securities depository Euroclear, any move to seize the funds would have disproportionate implications for one EU member state.
Arriving at the summit, Mr De Wever warned that not even during World War II were central bank assets seized: this was a massive risk, and it could not be borne by Belgium alone.
He had three demands: that the risk had to be carried by all member states, that if the assets ever had to be paid back, then "every member state will chip in", and that any other country which had been quietly holding immobilised Russian assets would also have to move.
If the three "reasonable" demands were met, then EU leaders could proceed to ask the European Commission to come up with a legal text to make it happen.
"If not," said Mr De Wever, a Flemish nationalist politician, "I will do everything in my power at the European level, also at the national level, politically and legally, to stop this decision."
Diplomats have acknowledged that Belgium, which had obdurately opposed using the assets ever since they had been frozen, had been softening its position.
Belgian officials had been working closely with the European Commission on what mutualisation of risk would look like, how would guarantees work, what would happen if Russia did not just sue Belgium in international courts but started seizing the assets of Belgian companies in Russia, or if Russia-friendly countries did likewise.
But key questions remained.
How broadly or narrowly would "risk" be defined? If Belgian companies were targeted in Russia, should other member states, whose corporations had quit Russia after the invasion, be on the hook?
What would happen if not all member states signed up as co-guarantors? Would that mean the countries that do take on an even bigger risk? How open-ended would the guarantee be? Ireland, for example, may need to introduce legislation, as had been required for one of the EU’s post-COVID recovery programmes.
What would the money be spent on? Only military support, or also for civilian needs (or both), and if the former, would money underwritten by European taxpayers be bankrolling jobs in the US defence sector?
Yet, all member states, Belgium included, keenly acknowledge the dire situation Ukraine faces.
While a Russian summer offensive failed to make any significant gains, Kyiv desperately needs air defence systems to counter the devastating effect of Russian ballistic missiles (President Zelensky said Ukraine would have no option but to spend loan money on US Patriot PAC III air defence systems).
The reality is also dawning on European capitals that with the Trump administration tapering off financial support, the EU is increasingly going to have to foot the military bill.
The cost of reconstruction, meanwhile, has soared to an estimated $529bn.
Arriving at the summit, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said allowing Russia off the hook would create a "perverse incentive" for Moscow to attack other European countries. The cost of the war, three and a half years in, was a growing burden on EU economies.
"Europe is doing a hell of a lot in terms of underpinning Ukraine's economy," he told reporters. "We have to support Ukraine in defending its sovereignty and its territorial integrity from a budget perspective, from a humanitarian perspective."
He added: "The costs of this war we are already paying for in different ways, (for example) in increased energy prices. This is the first major war on the continent of Europe, and that is having consequences."
Leaders got down to discussing the Russian assets issue after President Zelensky made his presentation, but it was soon clear that Belgium’s concerns were complex.
The Russian central bank assets immobilised in February 2022 were mainly in government bonds held in Euroclear. However, 90% have since matured to cash and have been placed in low-risk accounts managed by the Belgian Central Bank.
Those accounts then yielded large profits which were used, after much back and forth, to underwrite a €45bn EU-G7 loan to Ukraine in October 2024 (the so-called extraordinary revenue acceleration, or ERA, loan).
According to an internal note circulated by the European Commission to member states, this new and more ambitious idea would involve the EU issuing a "tailor-made debt contract" to Euroclear, essentially borrowing the accumulated cash balances.
These proceeds would then be converted into a so-called reparations loan to Ukraine, one that Kyiv would only have to pay back once Russia started making war reparations.
The Commission note insisted the freezing of Russian assets was "firmly based in EU and international law". The risk was not falling on Belgium, but on the EU as a whole, and under EU law, Russia would not be able to force any potential claim against assets within the EU, Belgian or otherwise.
"If enforced against assets outside of the EU, the exposure towards the Russian Central Bank would be reduced correspondingly. This results in a remaining residual risk that is both low in probability of materialising and low in value," said the note.
Despite that, Mr de Wever was clearly not convinced during the meeting that these convictions gave Belgium the cast-iron guarantees he was looking for. One senior EU source acknowledged that the size of the Reparations Loan - €140 billion - was the equivalent of Belgium’s annual budget.
During yesterday's summit, Belgium was still resisting a draft text that would explicitly ask the European Commission to come forward with a legal text to make the thing happen.
Later, leaders sought the views of the ECB president Christine Lagarde, and eurogroup president, and Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe, what they thought.
The ECB initially resisted any seizure of Russian assets, as posing a risk to the eurozone as a place where countries around the world could hold euro-denominated assets.
In March of this year, Ms Lagarde told a news conference that international rules would have to be adhered to: "I would certainly submit that the international law basis on which any decision is made will matter as far as other investors are concerned, and I’m sure it’s another element that will be taken into account," by EU leaders.
In Copenhagen on 19 September, the ECB president did not hide her irritation at the apparent lack of a detailed plan from the Commission about how the Reparations Loan would mitigate any legal or reputational risks.
While she told EU leaders last night that the risks were manageable, the message appeared to be that the ECB could not take a definitive position until there was a much more fleshed-out legal proposal.
While some leaders - the Taoiseach Micheál Martin included - were keen that the final communiqué formally invite the Commission to go ahead and produce a legal text, Belgium - and a number of others - were not prepared to go that far.
As a result, the statement was relatively anodyne.
Leaders "commit to address Ukraine’s pressing financial needs for 2026-2027, including for its military and defence efforts," with the Commission being invited to present "options" for meeting those needs, with a view to advancing the issue at the December summit.
The statement did not spell out what the "options" were, or whether there was a plan B, except that "subject to EU law, Russia’s assets should remain immobilised until Russia ceases its war of aggression against Ukraine and compensates it for the damage caused by its war.
That means we are back to the drawing board.
Optimists suggest that the work between the Commission and Belgium will simply have to intensify bilaterally so that a text which is detailed and covers all the areas of concern - both for Belgium and member states - can be prepared in time for the December EU summit.
Critics say a lot more of this work has to be circulated to eurozone finance ministers and the Economic and Financial Committee (EFC), which advises the eurogroup.
"The Commission doesn’t yet have the authorisation to produce a full legal text, but they need to be more precise in what they're thinking and to get that around some of the member states. Equally, Belgium needs to provide us with a more detailed analysis of what they're looking for," says one eurozone source.
Last night, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, attempted a positive gloss on the day’s events, insisting that, no matter what, Ukraine’s funding needs for the next two years would be met.
"We agreed on the what, now we have to work on the how," said Ms von der Leyen.
Kyiv will be watching anxiously.
