Charles Lichfield
The United States’ shocking turn against Ukraine has finally brought Europe’s previously academic debate on immobilized Russian sovereign assets to the fore. Since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s humiliation in the Oval Office in late February and U.S. President Donald Trump’s temporary pause on all weapons deliveries to Ukraine, an implicit European taboo on seizing the assets and transferring them to Kyiv has been broken.
Days after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Group of Seven agreed to block the Russian Central Bank’s access to the $300 billion monetary reserves that it still held in the West—mainly in Europe and Japan. Russia’s National Welfare Fund’s holdings were also affected. Russia had predominantly been parking its cash in safe sovereign debt, which it was purchasing through the Belgium-based central securities depository Euroclear. The sum of 183 billion euros ($197.6 billion) that has accumulated there is made of more than 10 currencies, including U.S. dollars.
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