Ukraine thanked the European Union on Friday for deciding to provide it with 90 billion euros ($105.46 billion) of support over the next two years - even if the bloc failed to agree on an ambitious plan to use frozen Russian assets to finance this.

Kozak, a longtime Kremlin official who had worked with Putin for three decades, was instructed to demand Ukraine’s surrender, according to people close to him. Kozak declined. He told the president that he did not understand the objective of the war and could not negotiate without knowing what Russia was trying to achieve.