The Ukrainian government backs the United States seizing and liquidating frozen Russian government assets and using the proceeds to benefit Ukraine’s war-ravaged citizens, Kyiv’s ambassador to Washington said Thursday.
“We fully support the idea to use those frozen assets in the future to compensate Ukraine and to use this money for the rebuilding and reconstruction effort,” Ambassador Oksana Markarova told reporters at an event organized by The Christian Science Monitor. “It would be, I think, not only fair but actually very according to the international law practices to use these frozen assets, to confiscate them and use them for the reconstruction processes.”
U.S. lawmakers in the House and Senate have been debating the legal pros and cons of using the estimated tens of billions of dollars in Russian Central Bank funds located within U.S. jurisdiction for such purposes. The Treasury Department in February froze Moscow’s access to the monies as punishment for its unprovoked war against Ukraine.
