Officials in Washington are trying to convince the European Union to seize Russian assets frozen in the bloc before President Joe Biden leaves office in two weeks, CNN reported.
Since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, the US and its allies have frozen about $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets, much of it held at Euroclear in Brussels, Belgium. However, the EU has been reluctant to seize these assets due to concerns about violating international law and the risk of retaliation from Russia.
Russia has condemned the asset freeze as “absolutely illegal” and warned that if assets are seized, the West will face retaliatory action targeting more than $300 billion of its assets in Russia.
According to CNN, the White House has made a final effort to seize this money before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
The White House is pushing the EU to transfer the frozen funds into a special escrow account, from which the money would only be released if peace talks between Russia and Ukraine yield results.
“If Russia wants to get its money back, it will have to come to the negotiating table,” a US official said.
Biden officials said Trump’s nominees “generally support” the strategy, seeing the frozen funds as potential leverage over Moscow.
However, the EU remains skeptical about the feasibility of the plan, especially as asset seizures could lead to serious damage to the bloc's international reputation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded that all frozen Russian money be returned to Kiev. “We will take the money to produce domestically and buy all the weapons we need from the United States,” Zelensky said in an interview with podcast host Lex Fridman earlier this month.
In response, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova harshly criticized Mr. Zelensky.
Although the White House has been trying for more than a year to convince that the seizure of Russian assets would not violate international law, many EU countries still consider this a "red line".
