Yesterday at 19:59
The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a bill to simplify the confiscation of Russian assets and transfer them to Ukraine for reconstruction after the destruction caused by the Russian war.
This was reported on the Committee’s website.
“Twenty members of the Committee voted in favour of the draft law “Restoring Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians”, with one Republican Senator Rand Paul voting against.
“There is no question that Russia has a moral and legal responsibility to pay for Ukraine’s recovery, given the devastation caused by its illegal re-invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ongoing war,” said Ben Cardin, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
“Confiscating the assets of the central bank of a foreign country with which we are not at war would be a first for the United States. With that in mind, we need to make sure that the product we bring out of this Committee and the precedent we set reflects our interests and values,” he added.
When passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives and signed by US President Joe Biden, it will pave the way for the first-ever confiscation of the assets of a central bank of a country with which the US is not at war.
Senator Ben Cardin, Chairman of the Democratic Party’s Foreign Relations Committee, is optimistic about the law’s passage. He noted that this document has broad support from both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as from the US Presidential Administration.
Earlier, in 2022, the US House of Representatives approved a bill providing for the confiscation of frozen assets of Russian sanctioned entities and individuals in favour of Ukraine.
In November 2022, the European Union froze €68 billion of Russian assets, according to an internal European Commission document, and is currently considering the possibility of using some of the frozen assets of the Bank of Russia to rebuild Ukraine.
In December 2023, the United States proposed to the G7 a plan to confiscate $300 billion worth of Russian assets.
