““Russian assets must remain frozen until Russia ceases its aggressive war against Ukraine””, – WRITE: www.radiosvoboda.org
In particular, the Declaration on Ukraine states that “Russian assets must remain frozen until Russia ceases its aggressive war against Ukraine and compensates for its damage caused by this war.”
“These assets will be extremely important during peace talks. Not those that are happening now because these are preliminary negotiations on a possible ceasefire. I am talking about real peace talks when, I hope, Russia will sit at a table with Ukraine, and where Russia will have to face the fact that they need to reimburse the cost of reconstruction and so on. And at this point, assets can serve as a guarantee, ”another diplomat explained.
“It is extremely important to keep this lever for negotiations, because if Ukraine does not have this at the time when real peace talks begin, it will be a lack of an extremely important trump card,” the diplomat added.
Sanctions concerning frozen Russian assets must continue with the consent of all EU member countries every half a year, and in Brussels they fear the next blocking of the continuation of these sanctions in the summer of Hungary.
Earlier edition Financial Times It wrote about the development of spare options to blocking Hungary to continue sanctions from thawing Russian assets. In particular, it was about the possibility of using the Decree of the Second World War, which allows the king of Belgium to continue to block frozen Russian assets.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky met in Brussels with King Belgium during a visit on March 6, when an extraordinary summit took place on assistance to Ukraine. “Discussed Belgium’s participation in the preparation of the first steps before the end of the war,” – was reported in telegrams President of Ukraine.
About $ 300 billion of sovereign Russian assets has been frozen in Europe. Most of these funds, approximately 190 billion euros, are stored in the Euroclear International Depository in Belgium.
