President Trump’s rancorous threat to abandon Ukraine is stoking support for a long-debated proposal to use billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to buy weapons for Ukraine and finance its reconstruction.
The money — roughly $300 billion owned by Russia’s central bank — was frozen by the United States, the European Union, Britain and others after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The aim was to punish President Vladimir V. Putin for his unprovoked attack and to cut off funds he could use to wage war.
As the war grinds on into its fourth year, a growing number of officials in Europe and elsewhere have been calling for the money to be released to directly compensate Ukraine.
How its this question still going?
Why hasn’t it been done yet?
If the assets remain frozen then they can be used as bargaining chips.
A partial transfer could be useful, but a full transfer of assets to Ukraine would be counterproductive.
Bargaining chips for what? Negotiating peace? A truce? A cease fire? There’s been ample time to do that and here we are.
Can we start to freeze USA assets?
That would be difficult for almost anyone to attempt. The USA is too large of a trading partner with too many nations.
Is this why Trump always cites $300B as theoney given to Ukraine? Because that’s the amount of frozen Russian assets and he hears about it from the Russians all the time?
Yes, but Macron tried to explain to him that taking these funds is illegal.
long overdue, tbh.
It seems more likely now that the US will release them.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump seize Ukraine’s assets after his performance a few days ago.
Then he would come back with… “What assets? Don’t you know I’m rich? I’m a billionaire baby!”
Chat GPT: how do you transfer frozen assets to your own bank account when you’re president but without having to go to jail for that later?
First replace the head of the FBI
…
…stop giving kids covid vaccines for free.
Cancel the education department…
Most frozen assets, by far, reside in Europe ($217 billion (€201 billion) to $230 billion (€210 billion)), with the United States holding just a small portion ($5 billion (€4.5 billion)) and Japan also holding some.
Can we start with all Trump and Musk assets?
Oh no… please don’t, that will erode the property claims of the vast hoards the ruling class possess, that would be terrible…
You can’t just take billionaires money because there supporting a horrible cause, next thing you know every morally bankrupt oligarch will be financially bankrupt, we can’t have that.
It was time to do that waaaay before Jan 20,2025.
Right now
Yes, yes
