EU proposes plan to confiscate frozen Russian assets

Brussels, Belgium | Xinhua | The European Commission on Wednesday proposed a plan to confiscate frozen Russian assets to compensate Ukraine for its damages caused by the conflict.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement that the frozen funds would go to Ukraine “to compensate for the damages caused to the country”, already estimated at around 600 billion euros (621 billion U.S. dollars).

“We have blocked 300 billion euros of the Russian Central Bank reserves and we have frozen 19 billion euros of Russian oligarchs’ money,” she said.

In the short term, the European Union (EU) and its partners could manage the funds and invest them until they are passed on to Ukraine, said von der Leyen.

“We will work on an international agreement with our partners to make this possible. And together, we can find legal ways to get to it,” she said.

She said that the EU was also proposing the establishment of a specialized court, backed by the United Nations, “to investigate and prosecute Russia’s crime of aggression.” (1 euro = 1. 04 U.S. dollar)