UK and Canada to join EU plan to use frozen Russian assets to boost aid to Ukraine

The UK and Canada have agreed to join the European Union’s plan to tap into the Russian Central Bank’s approximately €250 billion of frozen assets held in the West to fund increased financial aid for Ukraine, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

The UK has frozen Russian assets worth €28.7 billion since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to the Treasury’s most recent data, while some €113 million in Russian assets have been frozen by Canada, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

In a statement issued jointly with France and Germany on Saturday, the UK stated its intention “to progress towards using, in a coordinated way, the value of the immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’s armed forces”, a process it said would be coordinated with the United States.

The strategy of using Russian assets frozen in Western banks has been floated repeatedly since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, but Belgium, where a large portion of frozen Russian assets are held, has consistently expressed concerns that the confiscation of sovereign assets could potentially breach international law, a view supported by France and Luxembourg.

The move was once again proposed at an EU conference in Copenhagen earlier this month, where it gained the broad support of European leaders, and is due to be discussed in greater detail at another EU summit on 23–24 October. The finance ministers of Canada and the UK are also due to meet their G7 counterparts at the IMF Annual Meetings in Washington this week to discuss both the proposal and additional sanctions on Russia’s energy sector.