BRUSSELS — European heads of state are gearing up for a difficult two-day gathering where support for Ukraine is at the top of the agenda, but internal divisions threaten any significant action toward Kyiv.

The meeting comes at a crunch time for Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hops across the world seeking further aid in the fight against Russia’s invasion. He started the week in Argentina, then travelled to the United States and landed in Norway on Wednesday.

Throughout all of his stops, he delivered one message: cutting support to Ukraine is a gift to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

“We must make decisions,” European Council President Charles Michel, who will be chairing the summit, told CNBC Tuesday.

“It is our duty to make sure we protect the interest of the European Union by supporting Ukraine.”

Some 50 billion euros ($54.43 billion) are on the table. The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, proposed in June to send this sum to Ukraine between 2024 and 2027, but opposition from Hungary, whose prime minister met with Vladimir Putin in person in October, is blocking the disbursement.

EU leaders will also discuss whether to start official negotiations with Ukraine for the nation’s potential future accession to the bloc. Hungary has, once again, expressed reservations. A handful of other EU member states, such as Italy, have also raised issues over enlarging the EU.

Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna said that the start of official negotiations would be a “major guarantee of Ukraine sustainability.”

“We need these messages to keep on being mobilised,” she added.

Nearly two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, western support for Kyiv is flattening. There has been a nearly 90% drop in newly committed aid to Ukraine between August and October, compared with the same period of 2022, data from the Kiel Institute showed last week.

“Ukraine now increasingly relies on a core group of donors such as the U.S., Germany, and the Nordic and Eastern European countries that continue to pledge and deliver both financial aid and important weaponry,” the institute said.

The recent war between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel has also drifted attention away from Kyiv, while inflationary pressures have limited the ability of western governments to provide more aid. At the same time, Russia retains an advantage when it comes to military strength.

“Russia will likely continue to have a considerable advantage in terms of the availability of military equipment, munitions, and manpower, at least in the first half of 2024,” Andrius Tursa, Central and Eastern Europe Advisor at consultancy firm Teneo, said.

“Having mobilized its economy for the war, Russia is rapidly increasing its military output, in addition to supplies from North Korea and Iran. Moscow is also keeping up military recruitment to compensate for vast manpower losses without triggering visible public discontent.”

Recent surveys suggest that the majority of the Russian population is still in favor of Putin’s actions in Ukraine, although support is gradually declining. According to a poll carried out by the Levada Center and issued earlier this month, 74% of those surveyed support fully or to some extent the war in Ukraine.

It is “premature” to bet on a cut to interest rates, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, France’s central bank governor, told CNBC, as market players consider whether the European Central Bank has reached peak rates.

“We should remain at this level for a sufficiently long period of time,” he told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach exclusively on Monday. “Betting now on the next cut is probably premature.”

The ECB hiked rates once again earlier this month, bringing its main deposit rate to 4%. The benchmark rate stood at -0.5% in July 2022 before the central bank embarked on an intense rate hiking cycle in an effort to tackle high inflation.

Data for August showed that headline inflation in the euro zone came in higher than analysts had expected at 5.2%, down from 5.3% the previous month.

This is a breaking news story and it is being updated.

Spain voters are heading to the polls on Sunday in an election that could bring the far right to power for the first time since Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.

Polls published ahead of the vote projected a conservative win, with the PP (Partido Popular) set to secure about 34% of support — which would not be sufficient to form a majority government.

Some political analysts expect PP to join forces with the far right party Vox, which could be the third biggest political force in this election and obtain more than 10% of the votes.

“The most likely outcome is a coalition government with PP firmly in the lead and in control of most key ministries, and Vox as the junior partner,” Federico Santi, senior analyst at Eurasia Group, said in a note Wednesday.

He added that this scenario “would be moderately market-positive, as reflected in Spanish asset prices over the last few weeks, with a modest outperformance of Spanish equity indices compared to European peers, while the sovereign credit spread vis-à-vis Germany has remained broadly stable.”

The conservative party PP and the far right Vox have previously made political agreements to govern in three of Spain’s regional authorities and have other accords in smaller cities.

However, their relationship seems more of a forced cohabitation than a natural partnership.

In a TV debate ahead of the elections, PP leader Alberto Feijóo indicated that he would govern with Vox, if he needed their votes. Members of the conservative party have raised concerns regarding Vox’s anti-LGBT rights and anti-immigration policies.

Vox has also been criticized by mainstream politicians for opposing abortion rights and denying climate change, among other measures.

When debating against incumbent socialist leader Pedro Sanchez, Feijóo said that his rival could not lecture other politicians on pacts. Sanchez made agreements with separatist parties to secure a working parliamentary majority.

Tacho Rufino, economist at the University of Seville, told CNBC’s Charlotte Reed on Thursday that this election is less about economic than cultural matters — including nationalism, LGBT rights, and climate change.

For his part, Sanchez has been criticized for pardoning politicians supporting regional independence, for instance. During his mandate, there have also been issues with the “only yes means yes” sexual consent law, which reduced the serving time for many convicted rapists through a loophole.

The Sunday vote might also be impacted by climate change, as this is the first election to take place during the summertime. Spain is one of the southern European nations that’s been through a significant heatwave in recent days.

French citizens are heading to the polls Sunday in a presidential election set against the backdrop of war in Ukraine and a cost of living crisis.

The second — and final — round of voting sees centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron face off against nationalist and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. The same pair were also in the final runoff back at the 2017 election, but political commentators believe Le Pen has improved her chances this time around.

“While Macron is likely to get re-elected on Sunday, around 13-15% of voters remain undecided. Therefore, there is still room for surprises,” Antonio Barroso, deputy director of research at consulting firm Teneo, said in a research note Thursday.

Barroso said that one potential path to a Le Pen victory would be if a considerable amount of voters who had opted for hard-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in the first round, suddenly switched to the radical right instead of staying at home or casting a blank vote.

A poll out Thursday predicted that Macron would win the second round with 55% of the votes, with Le Pen on 45%. This is, however, a smaller margin when compared to the final result of France’s 2017 election. Back then, Macron crushed Le Pen’s party (National Front which has since been rebranded National Rally) with 66.1% of the votes, to 33.9%.

“Opinion polls now give Macron a 55% to 45% edge over Le Pen. In the past five years, polls have not understated support for Le Pen. But, with up to 25% of voters still undecided early this week, we cannot rule out an upset win for Le Pen,” analysts at Berenberg said in a research note Friday, adding that “a lot is at stake for France and the EU.”

Le Pen has softened her rhetoric toward the European Union since 2017. She is no longer campaigning for France to leave the EU and the euro, saying she wants to transform the bloc into an alliance of nations — fundamentally changing the way it works. She also wants French troops to move out of NATO’s military command.

“Le Pen’s narrow ‘France first’ approach and her desire to put her own French rules above EU rules would cause constant strife with the EU, hurt the business climate and scare away foreign investors. France would fall back,” Berenberg analysts said.

They added: “She wants to preserve outdated economic structures through subsidies and regulations. She is toying with the idea of lowering the retirement age from 62 to 60 after 40 or 42 years of work, whereas Macron wants to raise the retirement age to 65.”

The last days of the campaign trail have seen Le Pen’s old links with Russia and President Vladimir Putin resurface. In a key TV debate Wednesday against Macron, Le Pen was accused of being “dependent” on Russia.

Macron told Le Pen during the two-hour talks: “When you speak to Russia, you are speaking to your banker,” according to a translation. Back in 2014, Le Pen’s party reportedly requested loans from Russian banks including from the First Czech Russian Bank — a lender that is said to have links to the Kremlin. Le Pen rebuffed the accusations Wednesday, saying: “I am a completely free women.”

Warwick University Professor of French Politics Jim Shields told CNBC Wednesday that Macron has had the difficult task of defending his five years in office but also presenting a fresh vision for the future.

“Le Pen, this time round, can play the card of change much more than Macron,” he said. “What he has to do is show empathy, come off his high horse, try to show that he cares about people’s everyday concerns, that he’s not the president of the rich that many accuse him of being,” he added, referencing surging inflation in France which has become a pillar of Le Pen’s election campaign.

“Each of the two candidates need to try to correct their perceived weakness. For Le Pen, lack of credibility, for Macron, lack of connectedness, lack of empathy, in order to attract new voters,” Shields said.

If Macron is re-elected he will become the first incumbent in two decades to return for a second term. The yield on the 10-year French government bond has risen in the runup to the election, crossing the 1% threshold at the start of April amid wider concerns on inflation and the war in Ukraine.

Polls are due to close at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET) with early projections on a winner expected shortly afterward.