EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, citing the precedent with the Afghan central bank’s assets worth billions, suggested seizing frozen Russian foreign exchange reserves and using them to cover the costs of rebuilding Ukraine once the military conflict is over.
In an interview with FT published on Monday, Borrell said that in February, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order “to help enable certain US-based assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, to be used to benefit the Afghan people.” In Borrell’s opinion, “it is full of logic” to use Russia’s assets for similar purposes.
“We have the money in our pockets, and someone has to explain to me why it is good for the Afghan money and not good for the Russian money,” he said.
Borrell stated that one of the most important questions now is: “Who is going to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine?” As an “incredible amount of money” will be needed, and considering that the amounts raised in recent pledging conferences are just a “drop of water in the ocean,” the international community needs to come up with other ways to finance the rebuilding of the conflict-torn country, and using Russian reserves could be one way, he said.