As widely expected, the EU has unlocked the disbursement of its previously agreed €90 billion (£78 billion) loan to Ukraine.

Together with the approval of the 20th package of sanctions against Russia, this is good news for Brussels. It became possible after Hungary dropped its opposition following a change of government after recent parliamentary elections.

How many more such decisions the union will be able to make, and how fast, remains to be seen. Former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán may have been the most vocal disrupter of the EU’s Ukraine policy, but he was not the only one. Former close allies of his – Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic and Robert Fico in Slovakia – stay in power.

Another election in Bulgaria on April 19 returned the arguably Russia-leaning former president, Rumen Radev, as the likely next prime minister in Sofia. None of these are as explicitly hardline as Orbán was. But their combined ability to at least water down EU policy – limiting or conditioning aid for Ukraine and potentially delaying or softening sanctions on Russia – remains real.

So, for Ukraine the news is also rather more mixed than the headline of the end of the Hungarian veto would suggest. Granted, the disbursement of the €90 billion will help Kyiv plug critical financing gaps over the next several years.

Orbán’s exit doesn’t deal with other critical challenges in the EU-Ukraine relationship, especially regarding the........

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