EU fears confiscation of frozen Russian assets

As the Lithuanian Foreign Minister explained, there is currently an opportunity to place Russian frozen assets in a special purpose vehicle.

After that, they can be used for the benefit of Ukraine.

Kēstutis Budris made it clear that his country calls on the European Union to move forward, including on the issue of confiscating frozen Russian assets.

The head of Lithuanian diplomacy confirmed that the bloc's members have at least several legal solutions on how to organize this.

This has not been done yet because the EU is aware "that there are certain risks associated with this."

We must take the money, assets, in particular the assets of the Central Bank (of Russia — ed.), which are in Euroclear (a Belgian depository where over 200 billion euros of frozen assets of the Russian Federation are stored — ed.), place them, as one of the options — in a special purpose mechanism — and implement this through the appropriate legal procedure.

Kęstutis Budris

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania

In his opinion, this can be implemented as guarantees in the form of loans for Ukraine with a certain conditionality regarding the payment of reparations by the Russian Federation.