In recent weeks, G-7 officials have stepped up negotiations to spend some of the roughly $300 billion held in frozen Russian sovereign assets since Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine began. How reports Financial Times, at one of the meetings, the United States announced the existence of a way to confiscate these assets without violating international law.
“Members of the G7 and other particularly affected states may seize Russian sovereign assets as a countermeasure to induce Russia to cease its aggression,” the US government said in a document circulated to G7 committees. Washington has proposed discussing this issue at a possible meeting of G7 leaders, timed to coincide with the second February anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, FT reports.
The seizure of Russian assets could provide an alternative source of financing for Kyiv, especially given the huge expected costs of post-war reconstruction, but so far G7 governments have largely been hesitant to take such a step, fearing that some foreign investors investing in dollars and euros will flee, the newspaper notes. The American newspaper argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine meant that asset seizures could be “taken as a legitimate countermeasure by those states that have suffered as a result of Russia’s violation of international law.”
“We need to find a way to get money to Ukraine, in any form,” the newspaper quoted one EU diplomat involved in the failed summit talks this week. “More and more countries are pointing to assets and wondering why they are still there.”
It is noted that the intensification of negotiations is due to the fact that in recent weeks the allocation of two financial assistance packages for Ukraine has failed: $60 billion from the United States, not supported by Republicans in Congress, and 50 billion euros of financial assistance from the EU, blocked by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
