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Hungary lists two demands in exchange for lifting veto on Ukraine aid

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Hungary lists two demands in exchange for lifting veto on Ukraine aid

After derailing December’s summit, Hungary has made fresh demands to Brussels in exchange for a lift on its veto on the European Union’s proposed €50-billion fund for Ukraine.

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The envelope, known as the Ukraine Facility, is meant to provide Kyiv with financial assistance between 2024 and 2027 to plug its ballooning public deficit, sustain essential services and pay for reconstruction efforts.

Under the original plan, the Facility was supposed to be already up and running, as Brussels has run out of financial aid for the war-torn nation.

But during a dramatic meeting of the European Council last month, Viktor Orbán waged his veto power to strike down the proposal, which is pegged to a wider review of the bloc’s common budget.

It stalled the EU’s support at a critical time, as Washington also struggled to overcome Republican opposition to approve a new package of military aid. The impasse on both sides of the Atlantic has put Kyiv in an increasingly precarious situation, with Russia stepping up its brutal barrage of air strikes.

However, there’s a glimmer of hope: EU leaders are set to convene again on 1 February to give the Facility a second chance. 

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Hungary’s two demands

Ahead of the make-or-break date, Hungary has touted an idea to split the package into four annual envelopes, worth €12.5 billion each, according to diplomats with knowledge of the negotiations.

In practice, the divvy-up means that EU leaders would need to give their unanimous approval every year until the cash pot is exhausted. Doing so would run counter to the Facility’s aim to provide long-term, predictable assistance, as it would allow Orbán, or any other head of government, to block the aid as early as next year.

Hungary has also made an unrelated demand about the bloc’s COVID-19 recovery funds, the diplomatic sources said speaking on condition of anonymity.

Under current rules, member states have until the end of August 2026 to complete the milestones and targets necessary to access all the grants and loans they have been allocated. Otherwise, the money that remains unused will be lost.

Budapest is demanding an extra two years be added to this deadline, something that would require re-opening the extraordinary legislation that set up the recovery fund. The reason for this particular request lies in the fact that Hungary has been denied access to its national plan over rule-of-law concerns and could be left with a narrow timetable to spend the funds – if it ever manages to unblock them.

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Hungary’s recovery and resilience plan is worth €10.4 billion, of which only €920 million have been released. Separately, the country has €11.5 billion in cohesion funds in the freezer due to a wide array of concerns over public procurement, conflicts of interests, academic freedom and LGBTQ+ rights.

Orbán has repeatedly denounced the situation as “financial blackmail” and his deputies have publicly said the more than €20 billion should be unfrozen – in their entirety – before a decision on the Ukraine Facility can be made.

The quid-pro-quo has intensified since December’s catastrophic summit, resulting in what one diplomat called a “very transactional” attitude, an undisguised “trade-off.”

Another diplomat noted that Hungary was “completely alone” on both the division of the Ukraine Facility and the two-year extension of the recovery funds. Germany was especially critical regarding this second demand.

Hope still alive

Nevertheless, the fact that Budapest is at least floating ideas, rather than inflexibly sticking to its veto, suggests the atmosphere has become more constructive, even if it remains fraught, and there might be limited space for a compromise of sorts.

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Ambassadors approved on Wednesday a “partial negotiating mandate” to allow Belgium, the country that currently holds the EU Council’s rotating presidency, to start formal talks with the European Parliament as soon as a solution on the Facility is found.

The mandate, as the name says, is “partial” because it does not include the specific details of the special fund, namely the financial figures. These gaps can only be filled once leaders meet in February and discuss the topic vis-à-vis.

If the 27 member states fail – again – to achieve a breakthrough, Brussels will be forced to design an alternative scheme outside the EU budget with the buy-in of 26 countries only to keep money flowing to Kyiv.

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In a recent social media post, Orbán appeared to welcome the so-called Plan B.

“It’s good to see that the European Commission is preparing a plan B for the 1st of February, according to which financial support given to Ukraine could be managed outside the EU budget,” the Hungarian leader wrote. “This is a good decision! The Commission’s plan B is the Hungarian plan A!”

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Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting

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Minnesota braces for what’s next amid immigration arrests and in the wake of Renee Good shooting

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration officer, Minnesota’s Twin Cities on Sunday braced for what many expect will be a new normal over the next few weeks as the Department of Homeland Security carries out what it called its largest enforcement operation ever.

Protesters screamed at heavily-armed federal agents and honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt their operations in one Minneapolis neighborhood filled with single-family homes.

There was some pushing and several people were hit with chemical spray just before agents banged down the door of one home on Sunday. They later took one man away in handcuffs.

“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city councilmember. “They’ve definitely been out here.”

Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.

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People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners in the neighborhood where 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed Wednesday, watching for any signs of federal agents.

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More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of trainings to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization .

“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.

The protests have been largely peaceful, but the Twin Cities remained anxious. Minneapolis public schools on Monday will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.

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Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.

While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said on Sunday that the investigation into Good’s shooting death shouldn’t be overseen solely by the federal government.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews Sunday that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.

“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened,” Smith said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle.

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Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, defended the officer on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”

“That law enforcement officer had milliseconds, if not short time to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents,” he said.

Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn’t be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”

The killing of Good by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, led to dozens of protests across the country over the weekend.

Thousands of people marched Saturday in Minneapolis, where Homeland Security called its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation.

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Associated Press journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis, Thomas Strong in Washington, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

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Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report

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Netanyahu and Rubio discuss US military intervention in Iran amid ongoing nationwide protests: report

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the possibility of U.S. intervention in Iran, according to a report.

The two leaders spoke by phone Saturday as Israel is on “high alert,” preparing for the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Iran, according to Reuters, citing multiple Israeli sources. A U.S. official confirmed the call to Fox News Digital but did not provide additional details.

The report comes as nationwide anti-regime demonstrations across Iran hit the two-week mark.

On Saturday, the Iranian regime triggered an internet “kill switch” in an apparent effort to conceal alleged abuses by security forces and as protests against it surged nationwide, according to a cybersecurity expert. The blackout reduced internet access to a fraction of normal levels.

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KEANE WARNS IRANIAN REGIME TO TAKE TRUMP ‘DEAD SERIOUS’ ON PROTEST KILLING THREAT AMID ONGOING DEMONSTRATIONS

Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds his end-of-year press conference at the State Department in Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2025. (Kevin Mohatt/Reuters)

On Sunday, Iran’s parliament speaker warned that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America strikes the Islamic Republic.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf issued the threat as lawmakers rushed the dais in the Iranian parliament, shouting, “Death to America!” according to The Associated Press.

President Donald Trump offered support for the protesters on Saturday, writing on Truth Social that “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!”

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IRANIAN MILITARY LEADER THREATENS PREEMPTIVE ATTACK AFTER TRUMP COMMENTS

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

At a news conference Friday, Trump said Iran was facing mounting pressure as unrest spreads across the country.

“Iran’s in big trouble,” he said. “It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago. We’re watching the situation very carefully.”

The president said the U.S. would respond forcefully if the regime resorts to mass violence. 

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“We’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts. And that doesn’t mean boots on the ground, but it means hitting them very, very hard where it hurts,” he said.

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Protests in Iran intensify for the 12th day. (The National Council of Resistance of Iran)

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and White House for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey, Brie Stimson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine

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Four killed, 20 injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine

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Russia fired more than 150 drones overnight into Sunday targeting close to two dozen locations across Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring 20 more.

Ukraine’s Air Forces say they intercepted 125 drones aerially but confirmed that at least 25 strike drones struck their targets.

They added that Moscow’s latest barrage mainly targeted Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk, all of which were targeted in Saturday’s overnight strikes as well.

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Local officials in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia say the strikes targeted residential areas and energy infrastructure. More than 385,000 homes were affected by electric, gas or water outages, at a critical time as temperatures plunged to 10 degrees below Celsius.

Regional lawmakers say service was restored to most of the affected households and areas by Sunday morning, but added that emergency work was still being carried out to restore power to the remaining homes.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of timing their attacks with the cold peaks of winter as to maximise civilian suffering.

“They struck targets that have no military purpose whatsoever – energy infrastructure, residential buildings. They deliberately waited for freezing weather to make things worse for our people. This is deliberate, cynical Russian terror specifically against civilians,” wrote Zelenskyy in a post on X.

He also noted that this week had seen heightened Russian assault on Ukrainian cities, announcing that his country’s defence forces recorded thousands of attacks using a variety of different weapons.

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“Over the course of this week, Russia launched almost 1,100 attack drones against Ukraine, more than 890 guided aerial bombs, and over 50 missiles of various types – ballistic, cruise, and even the Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile.”

The Ukrainian leader thanked all units responsible for protecting the country and responding to attacks, and praised their tireless efforts and resilience.

He also called on allies to ensure his embattled country maintains “stable support”, in defence and diplomatic fields as coordinated dialogue efforts continue in search of peace.

Meanwhile, Russia says that one person was killed in Ukrainian strikes on the western city of Voronezh. Officials say a young woman succumbed to her wounds at an intensive care unit of a local hospital after debris from a drone fell on her house during Saturday’s attacks.

They added that at least three others were injured in the attacks which targeted more than 10 residential apartment buildings, private homes and a high school.

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The city of Voronezh lies just 250 kilometres from the Ukrainian border and is home to approximately one million people. The attacks, which Kyiv have yet to confirm, came after the Kremlin’s major offensive on Ukraine in the early hours of Saturday.

Additional sources • AP

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