President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on Ukraine’s partners to create a legal framework for the use of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine.
Source: Volodymyr Zelenskyy on X (Twitter)
Quote: “The decision to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine will be an entirely just and legitimate response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. It will send the right message to all would-be aggressors around the world: attacking another state does not pay off; it makes the aggressor pay. I encourage partners to move quickly on relevant legal frameworks. This year, we must achieve tangible progress toward using frozen Russian assets for the benefit of Ukraine. We firmly rely on G7 leadership on this matter.”
What’s stopping them now?
Freezing assets is generally used as diplomatic leverage. When there is no more leverage to be had, seizure follows. In WW2, the Western Allies seized the assets of foreign nationals deemed too close to the governments of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
The fact that they don’t have access to them. I don’t know exactly how frozen assets work, but I’m 99% certain that hostile or even neutral governments don’t just get to spend them as if they were their own.
And the Western Allies also carpet bombed the civilians of the Dresden city center with incendiary bombs and needlessly dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. Just because the right side of a war does something doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do.
Laws are like Calvinball - it’s made up as you go along, and only the willingness of other parties to humor you is what sustains it. In the case of nations that are outright hostile to one another, only the balance of power and the perceived likelihood of a return to normal relations prevents seizures. As Russia has seized Western property in the country, we can’t be accused of firing the first metaphorical shot - as the money is proposed to go directly to Ukraine’s war effort, there’s little room for serious accusations of opportunistic profiteering.
Straying away from the wider issue of terror bombing and the atomic bombings, my point is that there is precedent for this behavior. It’s not new or unheard of, it’s not opening Pandora’s Box. It’s what countries that are openly hostile to each other with little hope for reconciliation do.
Ah yes, the “he did the bad thing so I get to do the same” school of
kindergartenstatecraft 🙄Yeah, PROPOSED to. You think that the Ukrainian government has magically become the picture of efficiency and free of corruption? Hell, even if not a single kopek is used on anything but the war efforts, who’s to say that there’s not going to be graft there, like there is in every war?
Is that why you had to go back 80 years to find an example involving it being done to the most uncontroversally evil empire in the history of humanity? Because it’s such a regular thing that countries routinely do in case of hostility?
I’m not saying it as a “He did it so I get to do it too!” excuse, I’m saying it as a point that it can’t be reasonably seen as unprovoked.
I’m not saying there’s not going to be any corruption or graft with all money sent to Ukraine. I’m saying that accusations of the countries seizing the money simply profiteering become significantly weaker when the money is not actually going to the country that is seizing the money.
Libya is the most recent war where asset seizure occurred by Western countries that I can think of. Iraq before that. I believe Vietnam and North Korea didn’t have their assets tied up in US-friendly countries.
Britain bombed Dresden for three days, Germany used incendiary bombs in London, Coventry and Birmingham for three years.
Yeah, because “nazis did worse” is a great fucking excuse for crimes against humanity 🙄