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The European Union began to consider the issue of providing Ukraine with frozen Russian assets located in the EU. According to some estimates, we are talking about the amount of 300 billion euros of assets of the Russian central bank. There are also precedents when the private money of Russian oligarchs is planned to be transferred to Ukraine.
Ivan Us. He clarified that some experts call the figure up to 1 trillion, but this is together with the frozen property of Russia and its citizens.
There are precedents
According to him, the first country to transfer Russian assets to Ukraine is Canada – it will send us the money of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.< p class="bloquote cke-markup">After this, the 5.4 million Russian Orthodox billionaire Konstantin Malafeev, who first stood behind the seizure of Crimea and then supported the war in Donbass, will also be handed over to Ukraine by the United States,” he stressed.
< p>Us noted that precedents have indeed been created in Canada and the United States, but all this money is private.
He recalled that when he spoke with pro-government Russian experts, they noted that this was private money – and they were not interested in it . If they take money from the central bank of Russia, then this will be a bigger problem. And they assumed that they would not be given back to Ukraine.
Can Ukraine get Russian assets frozen in Europe: watch the video
A legal mechanism will be created
“I doubt that they will not be given to us. If there is a precedent with private money, this means that sooner or later it will be extended to the funds of the state of Russia. Most likely , it will be a legal mechanism and it will be attached to the criminal process against Russia, which is being formed in The Hague,” said the chief consultant.
According to Ivan Us, such a mechanism will be developed, and when the restoration of Ukraine begins at the end of the war, part of the money for this plan will come from the so far frozen Russian assets. And then, after appropriate court decisions, they will be sent to restore Ukraine.
The situation in the Russian economy: important
- The second largest Russian state-owned bank VTB suffered losses in 2022 due to Western sanctions and became unprofitable. This was officially recognized by the head of the bank Andrey Kostin. He stressed that the main reason for the losses is that in the period from February 24 to March 10, until a decision was made to limit the free distribution of funds in foreign currency to the population, 26 billion dollars were withdrawn from bank accounts.
- Russia's energy revenues have almost halved. Combining this with rising defense spending to wage war in Ukraine results in large economic losses. So far, Russia has managed to offset such a significant blow to its revenues thanks to increased sales of energy products at significantly reduced prices in China and India.
- Bloomberg reports that Russia's budget deficit in January is $25 billion. This happened because of the oil sanctions, because the day before the embargo on the supply of Russian oil was joined by the embargo on the supply of their oil products. And from this Russia suffers losses of 100 million euros daily. Political scientist Igor Reiterovich believes that this is a very threatening trend for the aggressor country, because it suffered such financial losses in just one month.
