The US and other Western states are studying ways to legalise Russia’s frozen assets and hand them over to Kiev, the Financial Times says.
The article says that among the steps being considered is recognising European countries as “conflict-affected”.
The US authorities do not publicly support the confiscation of Russian assets, but believe that such a measure would be legal from the point of view of international law.
The article says that the countries that are planned to be recognised as “affected” and “especially affected” by the conflict may include allies of Ukraine that provided assistance to it during the conflict.
The West believes that this will make it possible to later transfer assets to Kiev via the World Bank or the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
In November, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs James O’Brien said that the collective West will not return frozen assets to Russia until it pays for the SMO in Ukraine. We are talking about $300bn of assets.