2024-02-03 18:28:18
After Vladimir Putin’s major attack on Ukraine, the EU froze Russian state assets worth 200 billion euros. Now she wants to give the proceeds, more than three billion a year, perhaps to Ukraine. That’s a good idea.
But why only the income and not the 200 billion itself? And why shouldn’t Ukraine also be entitled to Russian funds that are stuck outside the EU, in the G7 countries? That would come to 277 billion – almost twice as much as the US and Europe combined have given to Ukraine since Putin’s attack. And five and a half times the German military budget. Such a sum can bring Ukraine nothing less than victory.
There are counterarguments, but they are not convincing. One is that other countries could withdraw their money from Europe if they see that it can be confiscated. If that were the case, such funds would have already flowed out when the EU froze the Russian accounts in 2022. But no one left – probably because there are hardly any investment opportunities outside the G7 and the EU. Who wants to hand over their money to Xi Jinping?
The concern that supporting Ukraine will be too expensive
If the criteria according to which the EU confiscates Russia’s money are clear, there is certainly no danger. If the reason is to wage a war of aggression, all states that do not wage wars of aggression are safe. And when autocrats realize that their next attack on a neighboring country could cost them dearly, that’s not a bad thing, but a good thing.
In Germany and other Western countries, diplomats are also racking their brains over whether confiscations are compatible with the principle of state immunity. Some believe that this principle of international law protects Russia’s foreign assets. Other experts dispute this. They say that the right to collective self-defense, enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter, also allows confiscation, and they point out that the UN General Assembly has obliged Russia to pay reparations.
Initial calculations show that there will be much more money involved than the 200 billion in the EU. In addition, proponents of confiscation argue that Moscow has ignored the International Court of Justice’s interim order to stop its aggression against Ukraine.
In the USA, the president would therefore already have the right to transfer Russian money to Ukraine, and on this side of the Atlantic, the European Parliament has determined that the confiscation of Russian assets is permitted as a “collective countermeasure” against Putin’s war of aggression.
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Such a confiscation would mean a huge relief for Ukraine’s allies because they and the Ukrainians would no longer have to pay for the fight against Russia. Russia would then do this itself. They would even make profits because Ukraine would use part of the money to buy replacements for bombed power plants and hospitals in the West – and of course weapons.
With the billions from Russia, Ukraine would first be free of the worry that it could lose its freedom just because it is simply too expensive for Biden, Scholz or even Trump.
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