Poland lifted its objections to a minimum corporate tax at an EU summit on Thursday, unlocking a package of deals that includes 18 billion euros ($19.16 billion) in funding for Ukraine in 2023, diplomats said, quoted by Reuters.

At the Brussels summit at the end of a tumultuous year, when the EU rallied to support Ukraine after the Russian invasion, leaders were restrained on several fronts, but it was also often difficult to agree on the level of pressure on who should put it on Moscow.

Diplomats said Poland caught EU colleagues by surprise, who had not expected its objections to the carefully negotiated package of measures, but Warsaw’s veto was lifted. “There’s a deal,” one of them said.

Earlier, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi addressed the leaders in a video message and called on them to approve the help that his country needs after almost 10 months of war.

“I am asking you to make sure that our struggle for peace, for Ukraine and for the whole of Europe does not depend on disagreements and contradictions between some EU member states,” he said.

EU leaders also had to make new efforts to agree on the ninth package of sanctions against Russia.

Any decision would need unanimity, and Poland and Lithuania, the EU’s leaders on Russia, have warned that the proposed food security exemptions could actually benefit Russian fertilizer oligarchs.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said that it is important that the sanctions remain as strict as possible. “We are a little concerned about attempts to ease sanctions under the guise of food security,” he said.

The leaders, who were not expected to hold in-depth talks on the EU’s struggle to agree a cap on natural gas prices, instead instructed ministers to do so when they meet again on Monday, diplomats said.