Beg, borrow, and deal

Ukraine, Russia, China, Venezuela, South Africa, and Bangladesh.

Ice harvesting, Serhiy Svitoslavsky, c. late 19th century, oil on canvas, taken from The Kherson Art Museum, Ukraine.

Hello,

Here are the five things you need to know today:

• UKRAINE. RUSSIA. The EU agrees a joint loan, leaving Kremlin assets frozen.

• CHINA. Washington gets TikTok, Beijing wants its ports.

• VENEZUELA. Maduro hopes to outlast Trump’s attention span.

• SOUTH AFRICA. The White House slams Pretoria for protecting its borders.

• BANGLADESH. Gen Z protests start afresh.

Today is also our last daily dispatch of the year. We’ll publish our Week Signals column tomorrow, before returning to a daily cadence on Monday, 19 January. We’ll otherwise appear in your inbox about once a week, including for our special Year in Review and Year Ahead features.

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UKRAINE. RUSSIA. Cold comfort

The EU agrees a joint loan, leaving Kremlin assets frozen.

European leaders agreed to borrow €90 billion against the EU budget with the exclusion of Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, after a plan to use frozen Russian assets failed. Ukrainian negotiators were due to visit Miami today.

INTELLIGENCE. Whether because it saw the Kremlin’s Euroclear funds as part of its own reconstruction plans, or because it didn’t want to give Moscow an excuse to further delay talks, Washington always opposed the EU seizing frozen assets domiciled in Brussels. This gave Belgium cover to oppose the scheme (in turn giving cover to France and Italy, which had reportedly sought a joint loan all along). Now, as usual, Germany is set to bear the fiscal burden.

FOR BUSINESS. After 14 hours of talks, a €90 billion loan on the EU’s balance sheet is essentially one on Germany’s. And in the wake of Wednesday’s €50 billion military procurement decision, this will anger many in Friedrich Merz’s Christian Union, not to mention the opposition Alternative fur Deutschland. Still, it may be better than uncapped guarantees, if Russia had successfully sued for the seizure, or the loss of faith in the EU’s role as a financial custodian.

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CHINA. Now in your backyard

Trump gets TikTok, Beijing wants its ports.

ByteDance signed a binding agreement with three US investors Thursday to divest TikTok’s US app. The US ambassador to Panama visited a coastguard outpost days after Beijing upped its demands over the sale of two ports near the canal.

INTELLIGENCE. Beijing has squeezed a range of concessions from Donald Trump in