BUDAPEST, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday that Hungary had opposed the use of frozen Russian assets and rejected participation in a joint European loan for Ukraine, following overnight talks among European Union (EU) leaders in Brussels.

Orban said in posts published on X and Facebook that after what he described as a long and challenging night, they had managed to avert an immediate risk of war. "We did not allow Europe to issue a declaration of war on Russia by using Russian assets," he said.

Orban said that using Russian assets would have "dragged Europe into war" and imposed a financial burden of 1,000 billion Hungarian forints (3 billion U.S. dollars) on Hungary, adding that Hungary had succeeded in protecting Hungarian families from this.

Earlier on Friday, the European Council approved a 90-billion-euro (105.4 billion U.S. dollars) loan package to support Ukraine's military and economic needs over the next two years.

When addressing the Belgian parliament on Thursday ahead of the EU meeting, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said that guarantees proposed by the EU for using frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine were "still insufficient."

According to Russian media RIA Novosti, De Wever told Belgian lawmakers that the confiscation of Russia's assets within the EU may "lead to a snowball effect, when Euroclear will no longer be able to meet the expectations of its customers, and the stability of the institution will be jeopardized. And that would be a financial nightmare." (1 Hungarian forint = 0.0030 U.S. dollar) (1 euro = 1.17 U.S. dollar) Enditem