Britain is ready to transfer all frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank to Kyiv in the form of a loan, taking into account that Russia will have to pay reparations after the end of the war. Such a statement was made by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
“There is an opportunity to use something like a syndicated loan or a debt facility that essentially uses frozen Russian assets as collateral to give that money to the Ukrainians, knowing that we will pay it back when Russia pays reparations”, The Guardian reports Cameron’s words.
Under the plan, once reparations are paid, the loan would be repaid and Russia would have access to its assets.
This proposal is more radical than what the EU has previously discussed. The EU proposes to transfer to Kyiv only the profits from the frozen assets of the Central Bank. The annual profit from these assets is estimated at 4 billion dollars.
As The Guardian notes, this is the first time Cameron is talking about this proposal in such detail. According to journalists, this shows support from the US, but not from the EU.
The G7 countries have been debating for more than a year whether the frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank can be confiscated without undermining confidence in the international financial system.
According to The Guardian, some 25 billion pounds ($32 billion) worth of Russian Central Bank assets have been frozen in the UK, but it has not been officially announced.
About 300 billion dollars of the Russian Central Bank’s reserves have been frozen in Western countries. For 2023, the international depository Euroclear earned 4.4 billion euros investing Russian assets frozen by the European Union. Moscow cannot use either the assets or the interest earned.
