Sweden’s prime minister on Tuesday said the European Union is creating a group to look into using frozen Russian funds to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction, a potential move with no precedent.
“The mandate is to contribute to mapping which funds have been frozen in the European Union … and secondly how to legally proceed to access those funds,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said, according to Reuters.
Some of Russia’s central bank funds have been frozen by the EU, which amounts to tens of billions of dollars. Using the money to pay for projects in Ukraine would amount to stealing from the Russian government and would ensure EU-Russia relations won’t be repaired anytime soon.
Kristersson said that it’s “Russian taxpayers, not all other taxpayers, who must bear the cost of the necessary reconstruction work.” Leading the group is Anders Ahnlid, the head of Sweden’s National Board of Trade, a government agency that deals with foreign trade.
“The EU has never before used frozen funds for the reconstruction of a war-torn country, so we are in a sense chartering new territory,” Ahnild said.
The US is exploring similar options but is currently targeting Russian billionaires’ funds, not the central bank. Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the release of $5.4 million to be given to Ukraine that was seized from Konstantin Malofeyev, a Russian businessman who owns Tsargrad, a Russian Orthodox Christian TV channel.
“Today, I am announcing that I have authorized the first-ever transfer of forfeited Russian assets for use in Ukraine,” Garland said on February 4.
Yeah, and when I write a check I want it to come out of Trump’s bank account.
The EU should stop being Washington’s vassal states instead of being a spineless hypocrite
The EU ought to take full responsibility for the consequences of their actions which is one of the reasons why this has all gone wrong big time.
The crux of that matter is that the Russian Federation had offered Ukraine the far better deal financially right from the beginning while they were ‘under ‘instructions” by their masters to push the tyrannical EU association agreement.
Remember the EU association agreement?
The Russian Federation had offered Ukraine a far more generous offer than the EU association ”agreement” which is why the Democratically elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych was removed during an extremely bloody coup.
Nuland’s messy interference in Ukraine’s paved the way.
Why did Yanukovych’s Ukraine reject the deal with the EU ?
Ukraine and the conditionalities with that IMF loan demanded that Ukraine open up it’s farmland to the likes of
Monsatanurm Monsanto, [now owned by Bayer] therefore it’s important to understand that Russia offered Ukraine a far better deal financially.Those conditionalities also demanded that East Ukraine be opened up for shale gas exploration — Eastern Ukraine is sitting on some very rich deposits indeed.
Enter the birdbrained Bidens and you know the rest – although its interesting to mention that Ukraine soldiers were dodging separatists bullets while fracking equipment was being installed behind their backs….]
As we are now being made witness of, the EU is utterly powerless. Germany was treated by the US and Norway with a terrorist attack on their infrastructure and the lifeline of their entire economy and Germany and the entire EU respond by sweeping the entire thing under the carpet. The US and Norway walk away scot-free, a big smile and much better deals for their natural gas and LNG in the pocket. Now that is power.
The EU is, like John Mearsheimer likes to say, a retirement home. He’s right. It’s almost dead. It consists of weak states that vie for Washington’s favor like a bunch of toddlers crowding around the kindergarten teacher handing out sweets. This is their entire claim to power on the world stage: sucking up better than the others.
Their ‘important’ leaders count a photo-op with the White occupant of the day, when recognizable somewhere in the same picture, as the greatest moment of their entire political life. It is pathetic.
And do not forget, UK served as the US proxy in the EU. The whole western part of the European continent was and still is occupied by the US. And they are the Besatzungsmacht. For decades, to say critical word about the US was considered and still is anti-Americanism in the same way as anti-Semitism is used if there is a word of criticism about Israel.
The whole Biden administration should be committed to an insane asylum, they are the biggest danger our planet has ever seen.
And what you posted has been confirmed by German government officials familiar with the issue.
The officials opposed the neoliberal economics.
Weaponizing the dollar and the Western banking system, is a sword that rapidly will lose its edge.
Putin: If I broke it, I won’t fix it so… F yeah, take Putin’s money to fix rebuild all those now leveled cities and pay citizens for damages.
Putin has already done the same with EU assets so F him.
Can you provide any specific examples of Russia seizing EU assets? Because, I have not seen anything about that in the Western MSM. And I think it would have been reported.
Here’s one. You can google for more. They did the same with many other western assets.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-european-union-vladimir-putin-boeing-ukraine-b2035700.html
Quoting from the same article:
‘Last week, Fitch Ratings warned that debt backed by leases of planes now
in Russia faced potential downgrades because of the difficulty of the
risk that state-owned airlines might stop making payments “or
‘confiscate’ (i.e. theft) aircraft.” ‘
In other words, Russia did not confiscate the planes, and for all we can tell it is continuing its lease payments or putting them into an escrow fund. The article does not elaborate further.
There’s a lot more if you google it.
But if you want to believe Putin is a great guy that hasn’t taken any assets from the West, then knock yourself out. You are free to believe whatever you want and stay in the darkness.
You should read your own source material before using it for your baseless argument.
Two things come to mind:
EU and US govt and corporate and personal properties in Russia’s control available to return the favor to some extent?
But more importantly, if I’m any foreign holder of significant $ or Euros in western financial organizations, how do I feel about the security of my money now? Chinese? Saudi and other Arabs? Africans? SE Asians? Now that you see how easily they can break their own rules and grab your money, how can you ever trust these countries’ institutions again?
I wonder if people start pulling money out of the City, NY, and western RE, what would that do to our economies?
Reparations? They have learned nothing from Versailles and this is ev en worse: undiluted theft.
Well, so much for the rule of law in the US, when the Attorney General puts his stamp of approval on the open theft of assets by state seizure.
Oh no, at least in American Law, Shepardize property seizure all down American History, and you’ll consistently find it “legal” where the owner of the seized property is officially found by a department of the US Gov’t to be a member of or associated with a member of an officially disapproved group or nation.
Thank you, now I feel much better about it. Not.
Frozen. Russian funds translates to stolen property.
Does the US pay for Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela and so many more.
Western values , rules are only for the others, the biggest war criminals sit in Washington. People like Biden, Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan and all the other psychopaths’ are really scary They belong in insane asylums, we need to be protected, so much insanity is unbelievable and they are let lose in DC?
The Germans and Russians need to bill the USA for the pipeline demolition to say the least, it is a war crime and they did it.
The destruction and exploitation of Latin America alone should be a lot.