European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde warned that using Russia’s frozen sovereign assets would destroy the international legal order.
Photo: REUTERS
A package of four bills, which in the United States are related to national security, was approved today by the United States House of Representatives, provoking mixed reactions in the world.
Of course, in Ukraine and Israel the Americans were thanked for the money. In kyiv, Zelensky himself did this, but the Israeli Prime Minister has so far remained silent, and the words required by the protocol were spoken for him by the head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Israel Katz.
But if few people doubted the actual allocation of funds to Washington’s allies in the person of Taiwan, Israel and Ukraine, this does not mean that this decision was received strongly in the United States itself.
US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Green bitterly admitted that wads of dollars would only fuel the fires of war in different parts of the world. “Peace is the last thing Washington wants because peace doesn’t fit America’s disgusting business model.” She called the package of bills “a foreign war package that does nothing for America.”
His colleague Paul Gosar said: “We are on track to spend another $61 billion to drag the United States further into an endless, pointless war in Ukraine.”
But the most criticized point was one of the bills that legalized the confiscation of frozen Russian assets. The United States was the first to make such a decision. And they risk being left alone: at least European officials are not going to make that decision. They understand that this type of measure violates international law and undermines investor confidence in both the US dollar and the euro.
The head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, has repeatedly stated that proposals to use frozen Russian sovereign assets in the interests of Ukraine “risk violating the international legal order.”
In Europe they pay special attention to the fact that only 5 billion dollars belonging to Russia are in accounts in American financial institutions, while a much more impressive amount, around 275 billion dollars, is frozen in the EU countries. . On the one hand, the bill approved today and not yet signed by Biden, even having received the status of law, will not greatly satisfy kyiv’s growing appetites. On the other hand, in Europe there are complaints that Washington is insisting on a risky joint course of action in terms of confiscating Russian money. And in Brussels they reasonably fear that the main blow of Russia’s retaliatory measures will fall precisely on the Old World, and not on the New.
The final decision on the use of frozen Russian assets is expected to be made at the G7 heads of state meeting in June, which will be held in Italy.
