EU Council approves use of profits from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine

Every year, the bloc plans to withdraw from 2.5 to 3 billion euros, of which 90% of the funds will go to military needs for arming the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Earlier, the Minister of Justice of Ukraine Denys Malyuska stated that the amount of 3 billion euros is "almost nothing" in comparison to Ukraine's needs. In order to win the war, according to him, Ukraine needs "hundreds of billions", however Malyuska called even 3 billion "a good first step".

Arrest of frozen Russian assets

At the end of January 2024, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine announced that the EU was accumulating frozen Russian assets and could transfer excess profits from them to Ukraine, namely Russian assets worth 260 billion euros, 210 billion of which are frozen in Belgium and Luxembourg.

On March 19, Bloomberg reported that the European Union had prepared a law that would allow Ukraine to receive profits from the frozen assets of the Russian Federation as early as July.

Reuters wrote that the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, plans to offer EU countries to use 90% of the income from Russian assets frozen in the European Union for military support to Ukraine.

At the same time, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the transfer of frozen Russian assets to restore Ukraine.

Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for the Russian President Vladimir Putin, stated that the withdrawal of revenues from frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine would lead to "inevitable losses" for the European Union and threatened "trials for decades."