EU Legal Service Legalizes The Use of Frozen Russian Funds for Rebuilding Ukraine

On January 27, the EU Legal Service informed the EU countries that there is a legal basis for temporarily using at least 33.8 billion euros of Russia’s overseas frozen assets for the reconstruction of Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has previously said that she plans to use frozen oligarch funds and central bank assets to make Russia pay for the damage it has caused. In the short term, the EU and its partners can manage these assets and invest them, and the proceeds will go to and be returned to Ukraine in the future. In the long run, this money is precisely the full compensation for Ukraine’s war losses. Authoritarian dictatorships such as Russia and the Chinese Communist Party tend to plunder wealth from their people and hide them overseas, which also becomes their weak spot. Most of these illegal assets are hidden in western developed countries. After the Russo-Ukrainian war starts, the precedent of using Russian officials and oligarchs’ overseas assets to compensate Ukraine is very important for ending Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Some observers pointed out that one of the important motives for CCP officials to comply with Xi Jinping in his evil deeds is to obtain huge economic benefits. Once western countries sanction, and even freeze the illegal assets of these officials, they will likely stop supporting the dictators, and even stand against them to safeguard their assets. Overall, such a policy will play a key role in ending the Russia-Ukraine war, preventing the CCP’s military invasion of Taiwan, and may even lead to the collapse of the CCP.