![]() The desire to make Russia pay for its aggression is understandable, but Western leaders must be mindful of political realities and the rule of law. This should include a process for adjudicating requests for compensation, including private claims. Meanwhile, the West should work with Ukraine to set up an international claims commission, similar to those used in hundreds of past conflicts. Similarly, firms with Russian holdings could be made to transfer the profits made from investing them for the purposes of compensation. The EU is right to investigate ways to deny Russia access to those gains and apply them toward rebuilding Ukraine. The West has other options in the meantime.Ĭlearing houses reinvest income from frozen assets, generating interest worth several billion euros a year. The idea is supported by EU members such as Poland and the Baltic states, but few governments have implemented laws permitting significant forfeitures. Confiscating them would require a degree of international consensus and coordination that doesn’t yet exist. But Russia’s frozen reserves are far larger and more dispersed. In the past, the US has acted to seize some state assets belonging to Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. There are few established rules for confiscating frozen state assets, for good reason: Respect for state and private property is essential to modern economies and a functioning global trading system.īy confiscating Russian assets, the US and Europe would risk undermining that hard-won norm, while giving other governments an incentive to take punitive action against Western interests. ![]() It would also set a worrying legal precedent. It would be contested by countries such as Brazil, China and India, none of which supported a United Nations resolution last November calling for Russia to pay reparations. Yet an outright seizure of Russia’s assets would be politically fraught. Rebuilding the country’s bombed-out infrastructure would help stabilize Ukraine’s economy, encourage refugees to return, and boost public morale. Advocates say that repurposing those assets is justified under the principle of “aggressor pays” - which is meant to punish states that try to redraw borders by force - and that funds should be released to Ukraine immediately, even with the war raging. Unilaterally diverting Russian assets to Ukraine at this stage, however, would create more problems than it would solve.Ībout $300 billion in Russian central bank assets have been frozen by Western governments since the start of the war, in addition to tens of billions in yachts, mansions and other property belonging to oligarchs and officials linked to the Kremlin. ![]() The moral case for holding Putin accountable is clear. With the costs of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine already exceeding $500 billion, some Western governments are pushing to use frozen Russian assets to pay for an eventual reconstruction. ![]()
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