Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has blocked a EUR 50bn EU aid package for Ukraine, hours after leaders side-stepped his opposition to agree to open talks with Kyiv on joining the bloc, writes The Guardian.

A crunch summit in Brussels broke up after a day of wrangling as the Hungarian leader refused to green light funding to help Ukraine’s government over the next four years.

Posting on X, formally known as Twitter, Orbán wrote “Summary of the nightshift: veto for the extra money to Ukraine”.

“We will come back to the issue next year in the #EUCO after proper preparation.”

The EU’s other 26 leaders agreed to come back to the debate early next year to try to thrash out an agreement on the desperately needed support for Kyiv.

“With 26 countries we agree. There is no agreement from Hungary at the moment, but I am very confident for next year,” Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said.

The blockage from Hungary – Russia’s closest ally in the EU – dealt a blow to Kyiv and its backers only hours after they had celebrated the bloc taking the symbolic step of agreeing to open membership talks.

Orbán had also opposed starting EU accession talks, but agreed to step out of the negotiating room to allow the other EU leaders to take a consensus decision without him. He later denounced the agreement as “a completely senseless, irrational and wrong decision”.