The West and Russia’s Frozen Assets - the failure to agree to confiscate

A plan to use the Kremlin’s money to fund Ukraine doesn’t do enough and is needlessly complex.

Leaders of the Group of Seven large democracies Thursday agreed to make a loan of about $50 billion to Ukraine, 

with repayment to be funded from the future capital income on roughly $300 billion in Russian central bank assets currently frozen under sanctions.

 if Western governments simply seized Russian state assets and turned them over to the Ukrainians?

This means the U.S. and European governments will use their interest payments on Russian-owned bonds to repay themselves for a loan they’ve made to Kyiv.

 It’s an example of how not seizing Russian assets outright creates new and ever more complex financial and fiscal distortions.

The G-7 plan is an improvement over the status quo, but it also reflects the failure of the G-7 to agree to confiscate all of the Kremlin assets. 

Wall Street Journal Editorial  14 June 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/g-7-russian-assets-ukraine-funding-vladimir-putin-42b8b5e9

Frozen Russian assets

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/06/frozen-russian-assets.html