Arriving at the summit in Brussels, European Council President Charles Michel, said ‘it’s key for us to make very clear we support Ukraine for as long as it takes, and we will discuss how we can develop more support’.

A lot of the focus is on Israel and the war with Hamas, so there are concerns that sort of European attention and resources being diverted in that direction and away from Ukraine. So President Zelensky, as he normally does, is expected to join EU leaders in a discussion later as he will dial in via video link.

There are a few things that are going to be discussed by EU leaders when it comes to supporting Ukraine. So first of all, there’s something that we discussed earlier in the week, a 500 million euro package to help member states fund weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

I expect that’s probably going to go through today. There’s a little bit of sort of opposition from the Hungarians, But I think there’s going to be enough political will to slip something to Ukraine at a time when so much focus is on Israel.

There will be a wider discussion on a 20 billion Euro package which has the same aim to buy weapons for Ukraine, but over a four year period. So this is part of Ukraine’s long term support from the EU. This is going to be a little bit more controversial, and there are some probably bigger hurdles to overcome than the initial 500 million.

So for example, you have France calling for the fund to exclusively be used to purchase European-made weapons for Ukraine. So France wants this to essentially bolster Europe’s defence industry. France is big on this idea called a strategic autonomy, which basically says Europe should be independent of the likes of the US and other big sort of markets when it comes to defence and industry.

And this is one way Emmanuel Macron sees doing that. But there are other countries, mainly of Eastern Europeans and Baltic states that argue by not allowing this fund to you to purchase US weapons, UK weapons, Turkish weapons, for instance, that it would take away and slow down aid to Ukraine.

You have the arrival in town for the first time since his re-election Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. Ahead of his arrival his officials were saying that he is not going to back any further aid or sanctions against Russia.

He doesn’t want to fund Ukrainian weapons deliveries. He doesn’t want to sanction Russia more. Mr. Fico campaigned heavily for his September election victory on a pledge to halt his country’s military aid to Ukraine and make its foreign policy independent from Brussels. That’s going to be difficult to overcome.