EU leaders will meet in Brussels today to try to agree the release of €210bn (£184bn) to help fund Ukraine’s war with Russia.

The money, which comes from Russian assets frozen after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, is mostly held in the Belgian-headquartered clearing house, Euroclear.

The money is seen as vital to Ukraine’s ability to keep fighting, because the country faces bankruptcy in early 2026 if it doesn’t receive more international assistance. That means Kyiv would no longer be able to pay soldiers, police and civil servants or buy weapons to defend itself.

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Last night, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is expected to brief the EU leaders today, wrote on X: “The result Europe produces – must make Russia feel that its desire to continue the war next year is pointless, because Ukraine will have support. This rests entirely with Europe.”

The Belgian government has so far prevented the move amid fears it will expose the small country to Russian legal action in the future.

The EU is racing to find solutions to Belgium‘s concerns, including passing an emergency bill that secures the sanctions against Russia indefinitely, superseding the need to renew them every six months and thereby insulating it from veto votes from Russian-leaning EU member states like Hungary and Slovakia.

Belgium also wants guarantees that all EU members will share any financial cost of Russian action against it.

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Why the push to use Russian assets?

The US, which has so far given billions of dollars to Kyiv, is losing interest under Donald Trump and can no longer be relied upon for financial support.

Previously, the EU had been giving the interest generated from the frozen assets to Ukraine, but was worried it might destabilise the Eurozone economy if it touched the assets itself.

That has changed, however, as Ukraine’s need has become more acute and fears over Russia’s wider imperialist ambitions have grown in recent months.

This unlocking of seized Russian assets is also being seen as a way to buy Brussels more leverage in peace negotiations, as well as reducing Kyiv’s dependency on Washington.

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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has been leading the campaign to release the funds, warned that “Europe would be severely damaged for years” if they fail to pass the vote and “this step is not about prolonging the war but about bringing the war to an end as soon as possible”.

In short, the consequences of using the frozen assets are now considered less risky than the consequences of not taking this action.

What’s at stake?

Trump wanted the money to be invested in two US investment funds, something the EU rejects. The US president has recently been scathing of European leaders, and the EU sees Thursday’s meeting as an opportunity to show its strength and unity.

In theory, the EU could pass the policy by majority vote, thereby sidelining the Belgian government, but officials are reluctant to go down this path for fear of alienating Belgium and causing a diplomatic rift in the alliance.

Much is riding on the meeting. If the EU fails to pass the vote, its credibility will take a severe blow. It will likely become even more irrelevant in peace talks, and Vladimir Putin might look to take advantage of a divided Europe.

Teachers will be trained to spot early signs of misogyny in boys and steer them away from it as part of the government’s long-awaited strategy to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG).

Sir Keir Starmer warned “too often toxic ideas are taking hold early and going unchallenged”, with more than 40% of young men said to hold a positive view of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate.

He has been challenged about his ideology in the past and called the concerns “garbage”.

Sir Keir’s government will formally unveil a £20m package of measures today, with £16m coming from the taxpayer and £4m from philanthropists and partners.

Teachers will also get specialist training on how to talk to pupils about issues like consent and the dangers of sharing intimate images – and all secondary school pupils in England will be taught about healthy relationships.

Such lessons will be mandatory by the end of this parliament in 2029, with schools to be chosen for a pilot scheme in 2026, which experts will be brought in to deliver.

And an online helpline will be set up for teenagers with concerns about their own behaviour in relationships.

The measures are part of the government’s strategy to halve VAWG in a decade, and the prime minister said it’s a “responsibility we owe to the next generation”.

“Every parent should be able to trust that their daughter is safe at school, online and in her relationships,” he said.

“This government is stepping in sooner – backing teachers, calling out misogyny, and intervening when warning signs appear – to stop harm before it starts.”

Department for Education-commissioned research found 70% of secondary school teachers surveyed said their school had actively dealt with sexual violence and/or harassment between children.

VAWG minister Jess Phillips told Sky News political editor Beth Rigby she had spoken to her own children about what’s normal sexual behaviour and what isn’t because she knows “what they might be exposed to”.

She said if the government does nothing to intervene, VAWG could double rather than be halved.

Jess Phillips: I’ve talked to my kids about strangulation

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The government has already announced several other measures to tackle VAWG this week, including introducing specialist rape and sexual offences investigators to every police force, better support for survivors in the NHS, and a £19m funding boost for councils to provide safe housing for domestic abuse survivors.

Investment ‘falls short’

But Dame Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, said the commitments “do not go far enough” and schools are overburdened already.

“Today’s strategy rightly recognises the scale of this challenge and the need to address the misogynistic attitudes that underpin it, but the level of investment to achieve this falls seriously short,” she said.

Claire Waxman, the incoming victims commissioner, added: “Victim services are not an optional extra to this strategy – they must be the backbone of it.

“Without clear, sustainable investment and cross-government leadership, I am concerned we run the risk of the strategy amounting to less than the sum of its parts; a wish list of tactical measures rather than a bold, unifying strategic framework.”

There have been three strategies by three successive governments to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) since 2010, and one refresh.

What has been the result of these endeavours? Police chiefs in 2024 described the scale of violence against women and girls as “a national emergency” as over one million incidents were reported in 2022/3, accounting for 20% of all police recorded crime.

At least one in every 12 women will be a victim, but the number is probably higher than that, as this sort of violence is typically underreported.

You will likely know a woman who is the victim of abuse. When you look at the situation, and think of all the mums, sisters, daughters, aunts and friends, it makes you want to put your head in your hands: strategy after strategy, plan after plan, women and girls and the victims of abuse are being let down.

Today, the government will launch a new strategy, drawn up by Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, that will attempt to finally put this right.

The promise is to halve violence against women and girls in a decade after what has been, as Phillips puts it, “a catalogue of failures”.

That catalogue of failures is long.

Successive governments had “failed to deliver a genuinely whole-of-government approach”, concluded the National Audit Office (NAO) at the beginning of this year, as it detailed a string of shortcomings when it came to VAWG plans: partial implementation; failure to learn from past strategies; no oversight of government funding being used for VAWG; a focus on victim support rather than prevention; and a lack of buy-in from government departments.

Phillips, who spent her career campaigning for victims of domestic violence before becoming an MP, wants to break that chain with her new plan, which has three pillars: prevention, with a focus on boys and young men to challenge misogyny and promote healthy relationships; stopping abusers, with more efforts and power for police forces to track down abusers; and more victim support.

It is a strategy that has been delayed three times. It was first expected in the spring, then the summer, to autumn, before eventually landing 18 months into a Labour government.

The delays have drawn criticism from campaigners, frustrated they “put more lives at risk”.

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‘I’m going to be getting up in everybody’s business’

When I spoke to Phillips about those delays on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, she made no apology for that: “I could have hit the deadline and missed the point.”

“I’m not really interested in a headline that says, ‘minister delivers a strategy one time’,” she said, explaining she’d had to “bang heads together” in different government departments to get buy-in and coordination (something the NAO said previous strategies lacked).

Phillips said the strategy contains a written action plan with time frames in it, as she insists the target to halve VAWG can be hit within the decade, despite the delay. There will be an inter-ministerial VAWG group to improve cross-government working.

She said: “What we have been doing is going into other government departments and building up relationships with their teams. We have VAWG-specific staff in Number 10 now. That’s never existed before. And we have been in the Department of Health. We have been in the Department of Transport. The real answer is I’m going to be getting up in everybody’s business. That’s the reason it has taken so long.”

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Strategy also focuses on men and boys

Speaking to Phillips, you cannot doubt her determination to make it a reality, and much of this strategy focuses on men and boys as well as women and girls, with a big focus on prevention and stopping abuse.

“I would be failing, we would be failing, if we didn’t try to prevent people who were already perpetrating – and stopping people becoming perpetrators in the first place,” she said.

That involves the classroom and more conversations and bringing in men and boys to make them feel they are part of this.

Risk of ‘doubling’ VAWG

When I point out to Phillips that one in four 18 to 29-year-olds had favourable views towards Andrew Tate, she was quick to make the point that three out of four don’t.

“If we don’t do something about the situation with what young people, both victims and perpetrators, are exposed to, then not only would we not halve [VAWG in a decade], but I would also be talking about the risk of doubling it,” she said.

‘I have spoken to my children in really explicit terms’

What struck me in our conversation, and as a mum of two teenagers myself, is the role Phillips said we all need to take in talking to our children about what they are being exposed to online.

Phillips points out that the age profile of perpetrators is dropping as younger people become more exposed to violent pornography.

One of the elements in the strategy is to ban strangulation in porn. Another is to have mandatory guidance in secondary schools to offer lessons on culture, increasing awareness of artificial intelligence and how pornography links to misogyny.

Phillips, who has two sons, said it’s incumbent on all of us to have those conversations with our kids about what is normal sexual behaviour and what is not.

“I have spoken to my children in really explicit terms about the things that I think they might be seeing and think as standardised in sexual practice,” she told me. “I have tried to talk to them about things like strangulation. I have said it is totally and utterly not like normal sexual behaviour because I know what they might be exposed to.”

Criticism over handling of grooming gangs

But as a campaigner around domestic violence and now a minister charged with halving VAWG, Phillips has also faced criticism over the government’s handling of grooming gangs.

Fiona Goddard, who was abused by an organised street gang in Bradford, quit her role on the victims panel in the autumn and called for the resignation of the minister over her handling of the inquiry setup, which Phillips admitted she found personally difficult.

She said: “I’m not going to lie and pretend that it’s nice when the thing that you care the most about in the world is the thing you are criticised for. And actually, when Fiona Goddard does that, I just take it. Fiona Goddard has every right to criticise me. When other people who never have done a bar’s work in this area, but want to use that to politically criticise, I think that’s cynical.

“One of the things that I think has been hardest about this process is that I am held to a different standard to literally everybody else. Now of course I should be held to a different standard because let’s be honest, Beth, I’m better than most people who’ve had my job before because of my experience.”

‘The strategy isn’t the end, it’s the beginning’

Phillips, the victim herself of a torrent of online abuse from Elon Musk over grooming gangs earlier this year, before the latest furore over the setting up of the national inquiry, now has police protection.

I wonder whether the launch of the strategy might be the moment Phillips steps back, but she’s having none of it.

“The strategy isn’t the end, it’s the beginning. There’s a lot of work to do. I would be lying if I didn’t say it didn’t have a mental toll on me, but I am not the only person doing this work, it isn’t all on me… the upside is better, it’s worth it,” she said.

The strategy Phillips is spearheading is the fourth in 15 years. After a series of false starts, Phillips insisted this time it will be different. For the sake of our women and our girls, I hope she is right.