The European Union holds or has access to €165billion of Russia’s money. Until a last-minute change of heart last night, it proposed to seize this money and transfer most of it to Ukraine, which is Russia’s enemy in the war that has been raging between the two countries for coming up on four years. There was widespread political support for this at EU level, where the morality of seizing Russian assets to fund Ukraine is almost undisputed, aside from the Belgians who fear that Russia may hold them responsible.
Readers will know that in the matter of the conflict in Ukraine, this writer has persistently been much more sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause than the Russian, and that remains the case. Nevertheless, the implications of seizing Russian assets and disbursing them to Russia’s enemy have not been nearly enough well understood. The last-minute change of heart was therefore sensible.
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