Daphne Rand, director of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance, said on February 15 that the United States would continue to seize Russian assets and was already planning how to use them to help Ukraine.
“We expect the Justice Department team to continue seizing Russian assets in accordance with the law passed in December. Now we are trying to figure out how best to use them, how to pass them on to support the Ukrainian people at a difficult time for them,” Rand said.
Earlier, on February 9, the European Commission announced that the European Union had not yet made a final decision on the confiscation of Russian assets. However, they stressed that the EU and its high-ranking representatives are confident that “Russia will have to pay for all the destruction.” They also noted that the EU is currently exploring ways to use frozen or confiscated Russian assets for this purpose.
A day earlier, Russian Senator Grigory Karasin, in a conversation with Izvestia, called the possible use of Russia’s frozen assets as economic banditry. He recalled that in Brussels they forget that Russia protects people from radical socialism and takes care of its own strategic security against the backdrop of NATO expansion to the east.
On February 3, the head of the US Department of Justice, Merrick Garland, announced that for the first time the United States used the sanctioned assets of the Russians to provide financial assistance to Kyiv. It is noted that more than $5 million was sent to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry from the bank account of an entrepreneur from the Russian Federation, Konstantin Malofeev. The businessman was twice sanctioned by the United States – in 2014 and 2022 for “actions aimed at undermining the sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine.”
In turn, the Russian embassy in Washington called the US decision to transfer the confiscated assets of Malofeev to Ukraine an outright theft.
On February 2, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmygal announced that he had discussed with the Executive Vice President of the European Commission Valdis Dombrovskis the restoration of the country. He noted that it is necessary to create a real mechanism that will make it possible to dispose of Russia’s frozen assets and direct these funds to the needs of Kyiv.
Prior to this, on January 27, Bloomberg learned that the European Union (EU) has legal grounds to temporarily use about €33.8 billion from the frozen assets of the Bank of Russia for transfer to Kyiv. At the same time, the G7 countries and the EU stated that there are no clear legal grounds for seizing the assets of Russian banks and redirecting money to Ukraine.
As early as November 30 last year, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed the creation of a fund from frozen Russian assets to allocate assistance to Ukraine. She noted that a total of €300 billion of reserves of the Central Bank of Russia and €19 billion of private funds of Russian businessmen are blocked.
Western countries began to impose sanctions in response to Russia’s conduct of a special military operation in the Donbass. Soon the European Union approved the decision to freeze the assets of the Central Bank.
For more up-to-date videos and details about the situation in Donbass, watch the Izvestia TV channel.
