With the costs of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine already exceeding $500 billion, some Western governments are pushing to use frozen Russian assets to pay for an eventual reconstruction. The moral case for holding Putin accountable is clear. Unilaterally diverting Russian assets to Ukraine at this stage, however, would create more problems than it would solve.
About $300 billion in Russian central bank assets have been frozen by Western governments since the start of the war, in addition to tens of billions in yachts, mansions and other property belonging to oligarchs and officials linked to the Kremlin. Advocates say that repurposing those assets is justified under the principle of “aggressor pays” — which is meant to punish states that try to redraw borders by force — and that funds should be released to Ukraine immediately, even with the war raging. Rebuilding the country’s bombed-out infrastructure would help stabilize Ukraine’s economy, encourage refugees to return, and boost public morale.
Yet an outright seizure of Russia’s assets would be politically fraught. It would be contested by countries such as Brazil, China and India, none of which supported a United Nations resolution last November calling for Russia to pay reparations. It would also set a worrying legal precedent. There are few established rules for confiscating frozen state assets, for good reason: Respect for state and private property is essential to modern economies and a functioning global trading system. By confiscating Russian assets, the US and Europe would risk undermining that hard-won norm, while giving other governments an incentive to take punitive action against Western interests.
