Ukraine receives 3 billion euros from frozen Russian funds
10 January 15:20
Ukraine receives 3 billion euros from the EU as part of G7 initiative to use frozen Russian assets
The Ministry of Finance of Ukraine has announced the receipt of 3 billion euros from the European Union to the state budget, reports Komersant ukrainskyi.
According to the Ministry of Finance, this is the first tranche under the G7 initiative called Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration for Ukraine (ERA), which provides for the allocation of USD 50 billion to Ukraine.
The EU’s total contribution to the program will amount to 18.1 billion euros (20 billion US dollars). The funds will be disbursed in installments until the end of 2025 and will be generated from the proceeds of frozen assets of the Russian Federation. According to official EU data, the volume of frozen assets of the Russian central bank in the European Union is 210 billion euros, which generates 2.5-3 billion euros in annual income.
“The funds will allow us to finance the priority social and military expenditures of the state budget, to maintain macroeconomic stability and to restore critical infrastructure,”
– commented Minister of Finance of Ukraine Sergii Marchenko.
At the same time, this is the first tranche of funds from frozen Russian assets in general. For the first time, the EU transferred €1.5 billion of Russian money to Ukraine in July last year, but it was not within the framework of the G7 initiative. At the end of last year, it also became known that Japan was transferring $3 billion of the proceeds of frozen Russian funds to Ukraine.
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Russian money abroad
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, about 260 billion euros of assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation were frozen in the form of securities and cash in the jurisdictions of the G7 member states, the EU and Australia, with more than two-thirds of them frozen in the EU.
belgium controls €190 billion of assets in euros, the United States controls assets worth between $40 and $60 billion, and the United Kingdom controls about £25 billion.
Ukraine’s partners are discussing the idea of confiscating these funds in favor of Ukraine, but they are stopped by the fact that this would be a violation of the rights of depositors. Even the decision to transfer the proceeds of these assets to Ukraine was very difficult for them.
As for the funds of private individuals, the American think tank Atlantic Council claimed at the beginning of the full-scale war that Russians had about $1 trillion of “dark money” abroad. According to a 2020 report, a quarter of this amount is controlled by Putin and his oligarchs. This money is generally untouchable for the West, and there is no talk of any action against it.
