



The United States and Europe have wrestled for months with the question of how to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction from the war. As Russia pounds cities, factories and infrastructure in Ukraine, the estimated costs have swelled to $500 billion, with some experts citing numbers as high as $1 trillion.
One solution seemed brilliant in its simplicity: What better way to foot the bill, and to make a moral point, than to make Russia pay?
But that has proved far more difficult than first imagined, and it appears less and less likely. Experts warn that it would likely violate international law and potentially set a dangerous precedent for countries to take the assets of others.
The money once seemed easily within reach — since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, Western nations have frozen more than $330 billion in Russian Central Bank assets held abroad.
Leaders of the Group of 7 nations, the world’s biggest economies, said this month that the frozen assets “will remain immobilized until Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine.” But they recognized “the need for the establishment of an international mechanism for reparation of damages, loss or injury caused by Russian aggression.”
With the bulk of the sum, over $217 billion, frozen in the European Union, the bloc’s top official, Ursula von der Leyen, promised last month during a conference devoted to Ukraine’s reconstruction to present “by the summer break” a legal way to use those Russian assets for Ukraine’s benefit.
But her declaration caused uneasiness among bloc officials and diplomats who have been involved in months of discussions over the idea and found it increasingly complicated.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/28/worl ... ssets.html