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European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc should consider seizing frozen assets from Russia’s foreign exchange reserves and use them to help fund Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts once completed. war.
Borrell told the Financial Times that such a move would be similar to that of Washington, when the latter used the frozen assets of the Afghan Central Bank, following the return of the Taliban to power, to help war-torn Afghanistan.
In March, Russia said sanctions on it over the Ukraine war had frozen about $ 300 billion in assets – half of its total gold and foreign exchange reserves – held abroad by Russia’s central bank.
“The European Commission has said that the cost of reconstruction could reach hundreds of billions of dollars, and EU capitals should consider seizing frozen Russian currency reserves to help finance post-war reconstruction in Ukraine,” he said. Borrell for the Financial Times.
“We have the money in our pockets and someone has to explain to me why such a decision might apply to Afghan money and not Russian money,” he added.
After the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the US administration of President Joe Biden, froze almost $ 7 billion in Central Bank assets, which were being held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.
In February, the White House said it planned to use half of the assets currently frozen in the United States for humanitarian aid and the rest could be used to compensate the families of the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Borrell said such a move could be one of the ways in which Russia could be forced to pay “war reparations” for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which it launched on February 24.
“This is one of the most important political questions currently on the table: who will pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine?” He said.
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