G7 Leaders Agree on Plan for $50 Billion Loan to Ukraine (2024)

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Here are the latest developments.

President Biden also signed a 10-year security agreement with President Volodymyr Zelensky. President Biden said the agreement would make Ukraine self-sufficient and put it on the road to becoming a member of NATO.

“Our goal is to strengthen Ukraine’s credible defense and deterrence capabilities for the long term,” Mr. Biden said. “A lasting peace for Ukraine must be underwritten by Ukraine’s own ability to defend itself now and to deter future aggression.”

Mr. Biden is trying to persuade allies that the United States will continue backing Ukraine even if former President Donald J. Trump, who has spoken openly of pulling the United States out of NATO, prevails in the November election. But if re-elected, Mr. Trump could abandon any security agreement with Ukraine, underscoring the political challenges shadowing Mr. Biden and other G7 leaders.

Here’s what else to know:

• On the eve of the summit, the Biden administration announced new financial sanctions aimed at interrupting the fast-growing technological links between China and Russia that American officials believe are aimed at bolstering Russia’s military in its war with Ukraine.

• Mr. Biden isn’t the only G7 leader arriving in Italy under siege politically. Polls suggest that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain will be unseated in elections in less than three weeks. And President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany saw their parties humbled by far-right rivals in European elections just days ago.

• Later in the G7 summit, the leaders will tackle topics including migration and artificial intelligence, an issue that Pope Francis plans to address on Friday.

Biden fielded a shouted question from a reporter at the end of the news conference: whether he would commute his son's sentence. “No,” he replied.

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The deal outlines a long-term effort to train and equip Ukraine’s forces, provide more modern weapons and help the country build its own self-sustaining military industry.

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Yellen also said that the interest from Russia’s assets could continue to help bolster Ukraine, making it harder for Putin to wait out the West. “This is the first tranche, and if necessary there’s more behind it,” she said. “In a sense, we’re getting Russia to help pay for the damage it’s caused.”

Japan commits $4.5 billion for Ukraine, Zelensky says.

“For Japan, this type of agreement and this level of support is a breakthrough,” Mr. Zelensky said on social media. “We see this and thank Japan for its unwavering solidarity.”

Mr. Zelensky said Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan had signed the pact as the leaders gathered for the Group of 7 summit discussed other plans to support Ukraine.

Ukraine’s deal with Japan included commitments on defense support, humanitarian aid and technical cooperation, Mr. Zelensky said.

Mr. Kishida said in a statement earlier this week that Japan would “do its utmost to ensure” that peace was restored in Ukraine.

Ukraine has signed several similar agreements with wealthy nations during the war.

Last December, Japan outlined a $1 billion assistance commitment for Ukraine, and signaled a willingness to later increase the support to $4.5 billion.

“The scale of the involvement is an escalation,” Daniel Sneider, a lecturer in East Asian studies at Stanford University, said of Japan. “They want to march in lock step with NATO. That’s a pretty big deal in Japan.”

Separately, President Biden was expected to sign a 10-year U.S. security agreement with Ukraine on Thursday, the first day of a three-day G7 summit in Italy.

The leaders of the G7 nations — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — also agreed on a plan to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan to help it buy weapons and restore infrastructure.

U.S. and other large economies agree on a plan to loan $50 billion to Ukraine.

President Biden agreed to have the United States underwrite the entire loan, but American officials said they expected allies, including members of the European Union, to provide some of the upfront funds.

The loan would eventually be repaid through interest and profits earned on the frozen Russian assets, which would serve as collateral.

In a news conference Thursday with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Italy, on the sidelines of the Group of 7 summit, Mr. Biden said the agreement was another reminder to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that “we’re not backing down. In fact, we’re standing together against this illegal aggression.”

In New York on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, an architect of the plan, said that the profits from Russia’s assets would provide Ukraine with additional aid in the future, making it harder for Mr. Putin to wait out the West.

“This is the first tranche, and if necessary there’s more behind it,” Ms. Yellen said. “In a sense, we’re getting Russia to help pay for the damage it’s caused.”

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Thursday that all the members of the Group of 7, the world’s wealthiest large democracies, would participate, including the European Union itself, but the extent of each member’s participation was being worked out by finance ministers and other technical experts.

The European Union might contribute up to half the money, a senior European official said, speaking anonymously under normal diplomatic ground rules, while American officials said that Washington would make up any remaining difference.

The issue is complicated, because if the Russian assets are unfrozen or if interest rates drop significantly, then the interest and profits may not cover the loan, requiring a burden-sharing arrangement with other countries to guarantee repayment.

The idea of a loan using the assets is an American one, given the need to get money to Ukraine quickly and before the November U.S. election that could return Donald J. Trump, who has been more critical of aid to Ukraine, to the presidency.

The European Union had agreed to use only the yearly profits and interest from the assets — perhaps $3 billion — to aid Ukraine, but embraced the essence of the American plan once the issue of who would guarantee the loan seemed to have been resolved.

The money is expected to be disbursed through various channels, instead of being directly handed to Ukraine, so that it will be used for Ukraine’s pressing military, budget and reconstruction needs, the European official said.

Alan Rappeport and Tim Balk contributed reporting.

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At a meeting of a Ukraine defense alliance, Austin pledges to keep sending military aid.

The U.S. defense secretary said that Ukrainian forces were both fending off Russia’s assault around Kharkiv in northern Ukraine and “holding strong” along the country’s eastern and southern fronts — although Ukraine has struggled in recent months.

Representatives from more than 40 nations attended the meeting, including all 32 NATO member states, several of what the United States calls its “major non-NATO allies,” and European nations like Georgia and Bosnia and Herzegovina that hope to someday join NATO.

“We have a clear framework we are supporting with Ukraine,” Irakli Chikovani, Georgia’s defense minister, said in an interview before the meeting began. “This is a political and humanitarian framework. This is something that has been declared for many months — since the beginning of the war against Ukraine — and we’re going to stick to that plan.”

Kosovo, which the United States recognized as a sovereign nation in 2008 but that is not universally recognized by members of the United Nations, has also contributed material support to Ukraine as a member of the contact group. Kosovo has been modernizing its military to NATO standards — an expensive and time-consuming process that Ukraine itself is also working to do in the middle of fighting a war.

“We are very determined on the path to joining the alliance,” Ejup Maqedonci, Kosovo’s defense minister, said in an interview at NATO headquarters. “For defense equipment, we are procuring only from NATO countries, mostly from the U.S., the U.K., Turkey and Italy.”

The country has conducted two training sessions on demining for Ukrainian troops and recently provided Kyiv with mortar ammunition and tracks for armored vehicles, Mr. Maqedonci said.

“We procure for ourselves, but we see the war in Ukraine as our war also,” he said.

Mr. Austin announced that Argentina, also a major non-NATO ally of the United States, had joined the coalition and he welcomed the country’s defense minister, Luis Petri, to his first meeting of the group. Argentina committed last year to delivering two Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters to Ukraine, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Mr. Austin said Russia had suffered “staggering losses” thus far in the war, including 350,000 soldiers killed or wounded, thousands of vehicles destroyed and at least 24 vessels sunk, destroyed or damaged in the Black Sea.

“This is a critical moment. The stakes of this war are high. Ukraine’s survival is on the line, but so is all of our security,” Mr. Austin said, adding, “Make no mistake, Ukraine’s partners around the world have its back.”

Climate change and aid for Africa have faded as G7 priorities, campaigners say.

Luca Bergamaschi, the co-founder of Ecco Climate, an Italian climate advocacy group, said he hoped the G7 would commit to increasing the target for global climate financing, which still depends heavily on contributions from the industrialized countries that make up the group.

But beyond a general expression of support by the leaders for expanded financing of projects to reduce carbon emissions, Mr. Bergamaschi said he did not expect “a concrete commitment to increase it.”

Western aid to Africa has similarly suffered, according to One Campaign, an advocacy organization. An analysis released by the group on the eve of the summit concluded that the share of aid going to Africa from Group of 7 countries, as well as the European Union, had fallen to its lowest level since 1973.

That is a result of cuts to aid spending in the United States, Germany, France and other European countries, the group said. It has led to a drop in net financial flows to Africa and greater fiscal pressure on those countries, which are projected to spend $81 billion to service their debts between 2023 and 2025.

“The need for increased investments that drive economic growth and healthy lives in Africa has never been more important, but many partner countries are looking inward instead of forward,” One Campaign’s president, Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, said in a statement.

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The loan comes at a critical moment, when Ukraine is being forced to sell some state assets, and when the momentum in the war has shifted in favor of Russia — meaning that destruction is accelerating, even as Ukraine struggles to rebuild its power plants and destroyed hospitals, communication networks, ports and homes.

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In a first, Pope Francis will attend the G7 summit.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, who invited him, said the pope’s presence would “make a decisive contribution to defining a regulatory, ethical and cultural framework” for A.I., adding that his participation “brings prestige to our nation and to the entire Group of 7.”

Francis’s participation in the summit comes as the 87-year-old pope was reported this week to have used again an offensive slur to refer to hom*osexuality, the same pejorative he was accused of using last month. The reports last month prompted a backlash among L.G.B.T.Q. people, toward whom the pope had generally adopted a more welcoming approach.

The pope’s G7 presence breaks with a long tradition in the Roman Catholic Church of refusing such invitations on the basis that a pontiff does not need state leaders or anyone else to offer him a platform to speak, said Alberto Melloni, an Italian church historian.

“The pope already has the floor,” Mr. Melloni said.

But in this case, Pope Francis, who has a record of breaking with conventional behavior, might see the summit as a high-profile opportunity to send another loud message on ending conflicts such as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Mr. Melloni said.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, told Avvenire, an Italian Catholic daily, that Francis was ready to use “all the means and spaces” available to make the case for peace.

Francis’ invitation to the summit, he added, was also a recognition of the profound ethical implications of the technology he will officially be there to discuss.

The pope has already been caught in the currents of A.I.-generated photographs of Francis wearing a giant white padded jacket, riding a motorcycle and drinking a beer at a music festival have caused widespread glee on social media. But Francis and the Vatican have also highlighted more serious implications of artificial intelligence, including in education, communication, working life, and corporate and government decision-making.

In 2020, the Pontifical Academy for Life, a research institute whose members are selected by the pope, issued a document, the “Rome Call for A.I. Ethics,” that laid out principles for the development and use of the technology. Top players in the field of A.I., including leaders at Microsoft, I.B.M. and Cisco, have signed the document.

Francis himself addressed the subject in a message on New Year’s Day, calling for a global treaty to ensure that A.I. systems preserved space for human mercy, compassion and forgiveness, rather than be plunged into a reality operated by inscrutable algorithms. He said it was vital to understand what effect these technologies will have on individual lives and on societies, on international stability and on peace.

The Rev. Paolo Benanti, who serves as an A.I. ethicist to both the Vatican and the Italian government, said that the pope’s attendance at the G7 meeting emphasized his willingness to engage with pivotal global issues.

“The pope shows that he has these antennae,” Father Benanti told reporters this past week, citing Francis’ other major concerns, such as migration and climate change, adding, “He perceives where the world goes.”

In the seaside town of Savelletri, where the G7 summit is taking place in a luxury tourist resort, residents had high hopes for the pope’s visit. Although tight security protocols mean that locals are unlikely to see Francis in person, many were keeping their fingers crossed for some payoff, however small.

“At least a blessing,” said one 68-year-old resident, Laura Mancini. “He must give that to us.”

What is the G7, and why does it matter?

The leaders, along with representatives of the European Union and selected guests, meet to discuss economic issues and major international policies. This year the summit’s host, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, has also invited other figures including Pope Francis and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.

Whatever the leaders’ disagreements on the issues, one feature of the summits tends to be a shared overall outlook. Their countries are major trading partners, and even if their share of global trade has declined, they account for about half of the world economy. They also share broadly similar views on trade, security and human rights, giving them enormous influence when they act in concert.

A recent example of that is the war in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose defense against the Russian invasion of his country has been a rallying point for the G7, is attending again this year.

By the same token, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is one of the group’s most notable absentees. Russia was a member of the group from 1997 until it was excluded in 2014, the year that its forces entered eastern Ukraine and seized Crimea.

The group’s origins go back to the 1973 oil crisis. It grew out of an informal gathering of finance ministers from Britain, France, Japan, the United States and what was then West Germany — initially known as the Big Five — as they tried to agree on a way forward.

Since then, the group and its added members have met dozens of times to work on major issues that affect the international economy, security, trade, equality and climate change. In 2015, the summit paved the way for the Paris agreement to limit global carbon emissions, which was adopted later that year.

The summits are often defined by the most pressing issues of the day: The Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, the financial crisis of 2008 and the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2019 have all dominated the meetings.

They are also a showcase for cultural diplomacy, as each year’s host country offers examples of the best of its cuisine.

For all the aura of diplomacy at the summit, however, each leader has an eye on domestic politics as well. A leader fresh from an election victory can sometimes arrive with a swagger. For a leader about to face an angry electorate, the reverse can be true. Several of the leaders in Italy this week are in the latter category.

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Biden will sign a 10-year pact to aid Ukraine’s military, officials say.

Speaking at the Group of 7 summit in Italy on Thursday, Mr. Biden said the agreement was designed to make Ukraine self-sufficient and put the country on the road to NATO membership. The accord is essentially an executive agreement between two presidents.

“Our goal is to strengthen Ukraine’s credible defense and deterrence capabilities for the long term,” Mr. Biden said. “A lasting peace for Ukraine must be underwritten by Ukraine’s own ability to defend itself now and to deter future aggression.”

The pact is modeled on the kind of long-term security agreements that the United States has with Israel. But the “Israel model” is based on a congressional agreement to provide billions of dollars in aid. The agreement with Ukraine carries a commitment by the Biden administration only to work with Congress on long-term funding.

Given the bitter monthslong wrangling over the $60 billon in aid to Ukraine that Congress passed this spring, there is little appetite for bringing the issue up again until next year. If Mr. Biden were no longer in office, that commitment would mean little.

The new accord does not commit the United States to send forces in to defend Ukrainian territory. According to two administration officials, it requires the United States to “consult” with Ukraine about its needs within hours of any attack on the country.

NATO membership for Ukraine — which President Biden has opposed while the war with Russia is still being fought — might compel the U.S. to send forces if the country was re-invaded by Russia. That is one reason Mr. Biden has resisted.

While Mr. Zelensky embraced the agreement at the news conference with President Biden on Thursday, the Ukrainians are skeptical of these accords. Without congressional funding, the support is largely rhetorical.

Ukrainian officials often talk about the emptiness of the accord known as the Budapest Memorandum, a political agreement signed in December 1994 in which Ukraine agreed to give Russia old Soviet nuclear weapons that had been based in Ukrainian territory. In return, the memorandum committed Russia, the United States and Britain to seek help for Ukraine from the United Nations Security Council if it “should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.”

When Russia annexed Crimea two decades later, in 2014, Western nations said that Russia had violated its commitments to Ukraine, and they made a similar case in 2022, when President Vladimir V. Putin invaded the entire country. The Russians denied that claim, saying the accord had only committed them not to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Wednesday night as Mr. Biden flew to Italy for the G7 summit, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said that the situation was radically different today, and that the United States and the West had already provided Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in aid.

The new arrangement with Ukraine is not a treaty, so it does not require American security guarantees the way that mutual defense treaties with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines do. And because it is essentially an executive agreement, Donald J. Trump, if re-elected, could abandon the deal, as he abandoned the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018.

Tim Balk contributed reporting.

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NATO defense chiefs pledge more aid for Ukraine, and carve out an exception for Hungary.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary is the NATO ally closest to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and under his leadership Hungary has refused to give Ukraine any weapons or other lethal war support. Hungary has also opposed European Union sanctions against Russia and delayed financial aid to Ukraine, leaving other NATO states worried that Mr. Orban similarly would block additional military support at the alliance’s gathering in July.

“It is well known here that Hungary’s position is different from the majority of NATO member states,” Mr. Orban said on Wednesday after meeting with the NATO secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg.

But Mr. Stoltenberg headed off any Hungarian veto by agreeing that the country would not be expected to contribute to any NATO efforts supporting Ukraine’s military with money, weapons or training.

On Thursday, Mr. Stoltenberg said he did not expect other NATO allies to follow Hungary’s lead.

“There has been as a broad agreement across the alliance for many years, and in particular, since the full-scale invasion in February, that we need to provide military support to Ukraine,” he said. “Hungary has been clear since the beginning that they don’t provide lethal aid, but other allies have.”

Some other allies, like Slovakia, have signaled that they are weary of footing the bill for the war effort. The success of hard-right nationalist parties in some of last weekend’s European Union elections has given rise to concerns that other states may also back away from supporting Ukraine.

Asked if allowing members to opt out of war support for Ukraine would become a new practice in NATO, Defense Minister Pal Jonson of Sweden shrugged off Hungary’s defiance.

“It’s very important that we make progress on supporting Ukraine, and we think that this is a pragmatic way to move forward in this regard,” he said at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday. “The most important thing is that the alliance, as such, can deliver any support to Ukraine.”

Mr. Stoltenberg said the defense ministers’ meeting would also finalize plans for a new role for the alliance in overseeing delivery of military aid and training for Ukraine, and discuss plans to send $43 billion annually to the war effort for the foreseeable future.

On the eve of the summit, the U.S. expanded sanctions on Russia.

The measures were coordinated by the Treasury, State and Commerce Departments and aimed to further isolate Russia from the global financial system and cut off its ability to gain access to the technology that powers its military arsenal.

The effort has grown far more complicated in the past six or eight months after China, which had previously sat largely on the sidelines, stepped up its shipments of microchips, machine tools, optical systems for drones and components for advanced weaponry, U.S. officials said. But so far Beijing appears to have heeded Mr. Biden’s warning against shipping weapons to Russia, even as the United States and NATO continue to arm Ukraine.

Although the measures expand the reach of the U.S. sanctions program, the Biden administration has so far held back from imposing sanctions on Chinese or European banks that it believes are helping Russia. The new measures do not restrict banks from facilitating transactions related to Russia’s energy exports, which the Biden administration has allowed to continue out of concern that restricting them could fuel inflation.

Announcing the sanctions, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a statement that “Russia’s war economy is deeply isolated from the international financial system, leaving the Kremlin’s military desperate for access to the outside world.”

At the heart of the measures is an expansion of “secondary” sanctions that give the United States the power to blacklist any bank around the world that does business with Russian financial institutions already facing sanctions. This is intended to deter smaller banks, especially in places like China, from helping Russia finance its war effort.

The Treasury Department also imposed restrictions on the stock exchange in Moscow in hopes of preventing foreign investors from propping up Russian defense companies. The sanctions hit several Chinese companies that are accused of helping Russia gain access to critical military equipment such as electronics, lasers and drone components.

In addition to the Treasury Department’s measures, the State Department imposed sanctions on about 100 entities, including companies “engaged in the development of Russia’s future energy, metals, and mining production and export capacity.” And the Commerce Department announced its own set of restrictions, banning American exports to certain addresses in Hong Kong that the United States says are used to set up shell companies to funnel banned goods to Russia.

Mr. Biden has tried before to choke off supplies and financing to Russia, and overestimated the effects of that move. In March 2022, shortly after the war began, he announced an initial round of financial actions and declared, “As a result of these unprecedented sanctions, the ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble.” It was not. After a brief dive, it recovered, and while today it is not as strong as it was a year ago, the Russian economy has been expanding because of the strength of war-related growth.

Much of that is thanks to China’s effort. It has been buying Russian oil, often at a discount to world prices. And it has ramped up its sale of dual-use goods, especially the microelectronics and software needed to manufacture weapons systems, drones and air defenses.

The result has been the rise of a somewhat parallel war economy involving Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Many of the firms subject to sanctions are in Hong Kong or just over the border in Shenzhen, the technology manufacturing center of China. Yet administration officials insist that this time, they can choke off what has become a deepening commercial relationship.

In announcing new restrictions on Chinese firms, the Biden administration is also hoping to spur European governments and possibly Asian allies to take similar measures.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken discussed the issue with European counterparts at a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Prague last month, and U.S. officials intend to put it on the agenda of a leaders’ summit in Washington in July.

Mr. Blinken has also warned the Chinese government that it cannot hope to have an amicable relationship with European powers if it props up the Russian defense industry.

At a news conference in Prague on May 31, Mr. Blinken said 70 percent of the machine tools that Russia is importing are coming from China, as well as 90 percent of microelectronics.

“China cannot expect on the one hand to improve relations with countries of Europe while on the other hand fueling the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” he said.

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Biden plans a push for frozen Russian assets to help rebuild Ukraine.

Now, after long debates about whether the West could legally turn those assets over to the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the allies seem on the brink of a compromise, to be announced at the Group of 7 summit in Italy.

The Group of 7, which comprises the world’s wealthiest large democracies, is about to agree to a loan to Ukraine of roughly $50 billion to rebuild the country’s devastated infrastructure, with the understanding that it will be paid back by interest earned on the frozen Russian assets, Western officials said. But even that amount, experts say, would only begin to make a dent in building a new Ukraine.

The financing announcement will be only a part of a summit this week that will range from how to reverse Russia’s new momentum to how to bring about a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Mr. Biden and Mr. Zelensky will meet on Thursday and sign a security agreement, said Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser.

“We want to demonstrate that the U.S. supports the people of Ukraine, that we stand with them, and that will continue to help address their security needs, not just tomorrow, but out into the future,” Mr. Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Italy.

“By signing this, we’ll also be sending Russia a signal of our resolve,” he added. “If Vladimir Putin thinks that he can outlast the coalition supporting Ukraine, he’s wrong.”

There will be moments during the summit when the leaders will try to lift their eyes beyond the current crises, including a meeting between the leaders and Pope Francis, focused on harnessing the power of artificial intelligence.

The loan deal, combined with a raft of new sanctions aimed at countering China’s effort to remake Russia’s defense industrial base, are part of the latest efforts to bolster Ukraine and hobble Russia at a perilous moment in the 27-month old conflict.

Still, Europe is bracing for the possibility that former President Donald J. Trump, who has spoken openly of pulling out of NATO, could be back in power by the time the group next meets, in 2025. And several of the leaders present — including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain and President Emmanuel Macron of France — are facing elections that could redefine Europe.

Mr. Biden faces the hurdle of convincing his allies, starting with Mr. Zelensky, that the United States plans to stay in the fight with Ukraine, no matter what happens in November. The extensive delays this spring in getting congressional passage of the $61 billion in new ammunition and air defenses, Mr. Biden’s aides acknowledge, cost Ukraine lives, territory and tactical military advantage.

Mr. Biden told Mr. Zelensky last week, in France, that “I apologize for the weeks of not knowing what was going to pass,” and put the onus on Republicans in Congress. “Some of our very conservative members were holding it up,” he said.

But the scope of the opposition in Congress also raised the question of whether that last injection of a sizable military package could be the last, and threatens Mr. Biden’s claim as the Western leader who rallied the rest of the allies to fend off further assaults by President Vladimir V. Putin.

Now, with the war at a critical moment, the Group of 7 leaders seem poised to end months of deliberations over how to use the $300 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets, which were largely kept in European financial institutions. The idea is to provide an infusion of economic aid to Ukraine.

During a trip to Normandy last week, Mr. Biden appeared to have persuaded France, one of the last holdouts, to support the deal. At the end of the trip, President Emmanuel Macron of France told reporters that he hoped “all members of the G7 will agree to a $50 billion solidarity fund for Ukraine.”

The Biden administration, after considerable internal arguments, had been pushing to outright seize the assets. But that idea fell flat in Europe, where most of the funds are held, out of concern that it would be a violation of international law.

The European Union did agree to use the interest that the central bank assets have been earning where most of them are held — in Belgium’s central securities depository, Euroclear — to provide Ukraine with about 3 billion euros annually.

But the Biden administration wanted to provide Ukraine with more funds upfront, so it devised a plan to use that interest to back a loan that the United States and other Group of 7 countries could deliver immediately.

The loan could be as large as $50 billion and would be repaid over time with the so-called windfall profits being generated from Russia’s money.

In recent weeks, finance ministers from the Group of 7 have been trying to hash out the complicated details of how such a loan would work, with several outstanding questions still to be answered. Officials have been trying to determine how the money would actually be transmitted to Ukraine, and have discussed running it through an institution such as the World Bank as an intermediary.

It is unclear how the loan would be repaid if the war ended before the bond matured or if interest rates fell, making the proceeds on the assets insufficient to repay the loan.

John E. Herbst, senior director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council, and a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said that unlocking the assets was of principal importance for the Group of 7, especially after the stalemate in Congress and the United States’ delays in providing Ukraine with certain weapons.

“The administration has been quick to get aid to Ukraine once Congress moved, and that’s to its credit,” he said. “But we still are slow in getting Ukraine what it needs in terms of the right weapon system, especially right now. This is not just an American failure; it’s a failure of the entire alliance.”

The unlocking of frozen assets would be “a game changer,” said Evelyn Farkas, the executive director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State University, who previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia under President Barack Obama.

Ms. Farkas said that the U.S. delays likely “focused the European mind,” in making European countries think: “OK, we have to come up with alternatives because the U.S. is not reliable.”

“Hopefully,” she said, “they stay focused.”

Alan Rappeport contributed reporting.