The US House of Representatives approved a bill that would allow the transfer of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine.
Frozen assets of the Russian Federation
Ukraine could receive almost $8 billion under this procedure. But now the bill must be passed by the US Senate.
The bill provides for the introduction of sanctions against officials from Russia and Iran, additional restrictions on the export of American technologies used for the production of Iranian drones.
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At the same time, the bill will require the Chinese company ByteDance to sell the social network TikTok, otherwise it will be blocked in the United States. The initiators claim that the platform collects confidential data that China can use.
Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of frozen Russian state assets are stored in US and European banks.
Voting in the House of Representatives clears the way for US President Joe Biden to confiscate frozen Russian assets and transfer them to Ukraine.
— Someone has to pay for the restoration. And I think it should be Putin, not the American people, — said former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul in an interview.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has invested heavily in the euro and dollar over the years to keep the ruble stable, building up about $300 billion in foreign currency reserves.
But in early 2022, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, all the Group of Seven (G7) countries, including the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, united and froze all $300 billion. Of these — about $6 billion are stored in the USA.
