“Outright theft”: why London called on the West to be bolder in confiscating Russian assets in favor of Ukraine

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, writing in The Sunday Times, called on the West to “be bolder” in confiscating Russia’s frozen assets.

“We must be bolder when it comes to retrieving hundreds of billions of frozen Russian assets.

First, we need to take the billions of interest that these assets bring and direct them to Ukraine.

And then, together with the G7, it is necessary to find legal ways to seize the assets themselves and also direct them to Ukraine,” Sunak said.

According to him, the British authorities and their Western partners “must be realists”, but in no case should they put up with “defeatism that only serves Putin’s goals.”

“The situation on the battlefield is becoming more and more difficult.

The loss of Avdiivka, where some of the wounded fighters I met were fighting, was a serious blow.

So we must face this harsh reality and then change it.

This is exactly the message I addressed to the leaders of the G7 countries during our conversation yesterday,” the British Prime Minister noted.

Let us recall that the day before the leaders of the G7 states, after a virtual summit with the participation of Vladimir Zelensky, said that the ministers of the G7 countries before the summit in Puglia were instructed to provide updated information “on all possible ways” of using frozen sovereign Russian assets to help Ukraine in accordance with “legal systems and international law."

“Russia's sovereign assets under our jurisdiction will remain frozen until Russia pays for the damage caused to Ukraine.

“We welcome the adoption of EU legal instruments related to the extraordinary proceeds of central securities depositories received from frozen Russian sovereign assets, and call for further steps to be taken to ensure that they can be used in accordance with the required treaty obligations and applicable law,” the joint statement said G7 countries.

The document also notes that Russia should not be able to “delay payments on its debts indefinitely.”

“We are committed to achieving full accountability, and we support Ukraine in seeking compensation for its losses,” summit participants said.

Doubts that have arisen

However, the EU still has doubts about the seizure of its frozen assets from Russia and the use of income from them, despite the fact that London supported the “American pressure,” notes the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

According to journalists, the topic of depriving the Russian Federation of its assets at the G7 virtual summit was again raised by US President Joe Biden.

Earlier, on February 13, Belgian Foreign Minister Aja Labib spoke about the pressure of the United States on the European Union on this issue during a speech before members of the Foreign Policy Committee of the European Parliament.

According to her, the American authorities are putting pressure on the EU because they themselves cannot yet allocate funds for the needs of the Kyiv regime. 

In turn, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller emphasized in a conversation with reporters that Washington is “encouraged” by the European Union’s new actions regarding Russian frozen assets and, together with its allies, continues to think through steps to “ensure that Russia will pay for the damage caused.”

However, despite the aggressive rhetoric of the United States, in a joint statement by the leaders of the G7 countries after the online summit, the issue of using Russian frozen assets was reflected only in a “general promise to increase efforts to study the technical aspects” of such a step, note journalists from Corriere della Sera, according to which income from the placement of Russian assets exceed €10 billion per year.

“Berlin and Paris, as well as the European Commission and the ECB, still have great doubts about the confiscation of Russian money, since a precedent of this type, in addition to complex legal consequences, could have consequences for the attractiveness of the eurozone,” RIA Novosti quotes the Italian publication.

• European Commission meeting

• © RIA Novosti / Alexey Vitvitsky

Earlier, Julie Kozak, director of the communications department of the International Monetary Fund, also warned about the risks of confiscation of Russian assets.

According to her, we are talking about the possibility of litigation, retaliatory measures and threats to the international monetary system as a whole.

Subsequently, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, in a conversation with reporters, was forced to admit that confiscating sovereign Russian assets frozen by the West is not as simple as it might seem.

"Wrapped in a wrapper"

Despite the outright illegality of the confiscation of Russian assets and the use of income from them, the collective West is no longer so far from making a final decision on this track, believes Evgeniy Semibratov, deputy director of the Institute of Strategic Studies and Forecasts of the RUDN University, lecturer at the Knowledge Society.

According to him, this is evidenced primarily by the rhetoric of the British Prime Minister and his Western colleagues.

“Apparently, in the current situation in the Northern Military District zone, the collective West has a feeling of despair due to the inability to defeat Russia on the battlefield, despite all the efforts made, including the huge amount of weapons supplied from NATO allies and their partners.

For this reason, Western countries are moving closer and closer to the implementation of banal theft in the form of confiscation of Russian assets and income from them.

London and its allies realized that there are no other ways to provide financial support for Ukraine, and they are ready to gamble on the viability of the entire Western financial system, the credibility of which will be fundamentally undermined after such a step.

A precedent will be created in the West for completely illegal confiscation, but it will be wrapped up in the struggle of democracy against dictatorship,” Semibratov did not rule out in a conversation with RT.

However, despite the fact that Western countries will find formal justification for such a step, the Rubicon will be passed and Western financial institutions in the next decade will no longer be considered reliable for investments.

“Washington and London in this sense have actually achieved synergy in terms of pressure on EU countries.

Therefore, we should expect corresponding statements from the G7 in the near future.

With a high degree of probability, we are really on the verge of making this historic decision,” Semibratov said.

In turn, Associate Professor at the Academy of Labor and Social Relations Pavel Feldman noted that when implementing any anti-Russian initiative, the role of instigator after the United States, as a rule, is assumed by Great Britain.

“This is explained by London’s desire to destroy historically established economic ties between Russia and the countries of continental Europe.

Thus, London is playing against Germany, its main European competitor.

The provocation of the Ukrainian crisis by the United Kingdom has already led to the fact that the largest EU economies have lost Russian energy resources, which led to an energy crisis in the eurozone and a serious decline in industry.

Now Sunak is trying to strike a blow at the financial system of Brussels, Paris and Berlin,” Feldman stated in a commentary to RT.

However, if, under the influence of London, the leaders of the European Union decide to seize the frozen assets of the Russian Federation, they will forever deprive their countries of the image of a “safe haven for investment,” the analyst believes.

• EU representatives and G7 leaders

• © AP Photo/Susan Walsh

“In effect, the UK is inciting continental Europe to be complicit in the crime.

And the likelihood of making such an unlawful decision is growing every day, since the West does not have enough of its own funds to support Ukraine.

At the same time, American and European politicians lobbying the interests of weapons giants propose investing expropriated Russian assets in the development of their own military-industrial complex with the aim of producing and transferring weapons to Kyiv.

They are just waiting for someone to create a similar precedent.

Apparently, London is ready to do this now and thus set a bad example for the entire collective West,” concluded Feldman.