US offers loan in billions of euro to Ukraine, secured by Russian asset profits

The US has offered to lend tens of billions of euros to Ukraine against future profits from frozen Russian state assets in Western countries.

Source: Financial Times

The G7 group of countries is divided over the handling of €260 billion worth of Russian assets frozen by the West since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Washington has supported the idea of confiscating the reserves in full and transferring them to Ukraine, which, according to some European officials, could violate international law and destabilise financial markets. EU countries would prefer to give Kyiv only the profits earned from the relevant assets.

But the issue of using Russian reserves to help Kyiv has become more pressing in recent months, when the issue of additional US aid to Ukraine has been blocked in Congress.

Quote: "We’re at a point in which we should explore every possible avenue to maximise the value of the immobilised reserves for Ukraine. We can’t wait forever, we know that," Daleep Singh, Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics, said on Wednesday in Kyiv.

Singh said that the US proposal involves "present value of the future interest stream of the immobilised assets, either through a bond or a loan".

He noted that the Europeans have already demonstrated their readiness to transfer interest from their reserves to Ukraine on a semi-annual basis. However, there are ways to "supersize the value of these income flows over time".

"Instead of just transferring the yearly profits from the reserves... it’s conceptually possible to transfer the 10 years of profits or 30 years of profits," he said. "The present value of those profits adds up to a very large number."

Previously:

• Countries that support Russia demand that the EU abandon all plans to seize Moscow's state assets.
• The US proposed its allies in the G7 to create a special purpose company to issue at least US$50 billion of bonds from the profits of frozen Russian sovereign assets and use these funds to support Ukraine.

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