The threatening threat of President Trump to abandon Ukraine is fueling support for a long -lasting proposal to use billions of dollars in frozen Russian goods to buy weapons for Ukraine and finance his reconstruction.
The money – about 300 billion dollars owned by the Russian Central Bank – were frozen from the United States, the European Union, Great Britain and others after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The goal was to punish President Vladimir V. Putin for its attack not caused and cut the funds he could use for the war of wages.
While the war starts at its fourth year, an increasing number of officials in Europe and elsewhere asked that the money be released to directly compensate for Ukraine.
The idea recently collected impetus, while President Trump promised broker quickly to end the war while threatening to cut US aid in Ukraine.
“Just talk, it’s time to act!” Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland, published x last month. “We finance our aid for Ukraine from Russian frozen goods.”
Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have joined the call. “The weather is mature now to take the next step,” said Margus Tsahkna, Foreign Minister of Estonia, last month, after having presented a discussion document in the field of the European Union.
Philip D. Zelikow, a senior member at the Hoover institute of Stanford and a former diplomat who studied how to transfer the activities to Ukraine, said: “This problem is now in the front row”.
He stressed that American banks held only a small part of the frozen activities. Most of the funds – about $ 250 billion – are found in financial institutions in the European Union, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Japan and Singapore, according to a Zelikow analysis. This means that a block of nations could move to use them even if the United States had not followed the plan, he said.
After the invasion, the United States, Europe and the other allies quickly took advantage of their domain of the global financial system and have frozen the Russian activities held by their financial institutions. Later, the industrialized democracies that make up the group of 7 have committed themselves to retaining the funds “until Russia pays for the damage caused to Ukraine”.
The latest estimate to repair that the damage is $ 524 billion in 10 years, according to an update released last week by the World Bank.
If the Cremlin’s money in Ukraine was made controversial instead of excluding Russia’s access to it. Legal experts and government officials – including some who have worked for President Joseph R. Biden Jr. – have warned that the confiscation of money could violate international law and undermine trust in western financial institutions. And there was the concern that the American and European activities held in other countries could be more at risk in the future if a controversy was presented.
France, Belgium and Germany have resisted the idea in the past.
When President Emmanuel Macron from France visited the White House last month, he reiterated that Russia’s activities “are not our things, so they are frozen”. And Belgium, which holds the largest single piece of Russian money, for example, is worried about the potentially harmful legal and financial repercussions of the transfer of funds to Ukraine.
Under the pressure of supporters, however, the European Union has convened a working group to study the proposal. And last summer, Europe and the United States agreed to issue a loan of about $ 50 billion in Ukraine which would have been refunded for the interest and profits of frozen Russian activities.
Last week, Rishi Sunak, a member of the British Parliament and the former prime minister, weighed on behalf of a complete transfer. “We must find a way to get more resources in Ukraine,” he wrote in an essay published in The Economist, claiming that frozen Russian activities should be used to reconstruct Ukrainian and establish armed forces that can discourage Russia.
“Once transferred to Ukraine, this money can be used to ensure that the country cannot only recover from the war, but also prevent it again.”
The disastrous meeting on Friday during which Trump reproached President Volodymyr Zelensky’s president of Ukraine only underlined the urgent need for Kyiv to find new financing sources, the experts said.
Before the Blowup, Trump was pushing Mr. Zelensky to sign an agreement of minerals who would establish an investment fund of reconstruction of the property joined by Ukraine and the United States. Part of the money that in the end could be earned by the development of deposits of minerals, oil and gas owned by the government have been allocated for the fund.
Now that Mr. Trump is threatening to withdraw all aid for Ukraine, while not ensuring the safety of the country from Russian aggression, the scramble in Europe to understand the ways to increase support for Ukraine has intensified.
Last weekend, Prime Minister Keir Starmer from Great Britain and Zelensky agreed a loan of $ 2.8 billion for Ukrainian military equipment that would have been refunded using the profits of frozen Russian activities. Thursday, the leaders of the European Union nations will meet in Brussels for a special summit on defense and Ukraine.
The United States have no “zero desire to give money,” said Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kiev School of Economics and former Ukrainian economic minister. “In the end, the Russian resources will be used in one way or another,” he said, because there are few other options. If the war drags itself, they will be used to buy weapons, he said; And if it ends soon, then for the reconstruction.
Several legal experts and former government officials, including Lawrence H. Summers, former secretary of the treasure; Robert B. Zoellick, former president of the World Bank and American commercial representative; And Laurence Tribes, professor of law in Harvard, claimed that the legal and financial obstacles of the transfer of Russian funds to Ukraine could be overcome.
Then there is the unpredictability of Mr. Trump. Even if the mineral agreement is revived, there is still the problem of safety for Ukraine.
Nobody will invest in Ukraine until a peace agreement is signed and Ryan O’Keeffe, CEO and Manager of BlackRock’s communications, has not been underway, said Ryan O’Keeffe. The financial company previously advised Ukraine on how to establish a development fund, but while investors made commitments, nobody has yet put in cash.
Jeanna Sperslek Reports contributed by Brussels.