kyiv is getting impatient and asking for more. This Monday, March 4, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Chmygal urged the West to transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine. 300 billion euros in total which could prove to be of precious help in its fight against Russian troops who try to gain ground every day.
“The confiscation of Russian assets should become a reliable source of support for our state and to finance our reconstruction,” he stressed. Especially at a time when dozens of elections are about to take place in countries allied to Ukraine, the emergency is at its height.
The Ukrainian government fears that changes in leadership will have considerable repercussions in the support provided to Ukraine in the war triggered by the Russian invasion of February 24, 2022. The European elections are in particular the subject of keen attention . And for good reason, on the Old Continent, the far right is on the rise, and kyiv is worried about a nationalist tidal wave in Parliament next June.
Elections monitored very closely
“Help from our partners is an extremely important tool, but we need predictability and stability regardless of the weather, political fluctuations, electoral cycles that will take place around the world,” Denys Chmygal said at a conference Press. And he added: the uncertainty over the continuation of aid that they entail “represents great stress for our partners as well as for us”.
One election in particular is feared by kyiv: the American presidential election which must be held at the end of the year, and whose outcome could well turn out to be favorable to the former President of the United States Donald Trump (2016- 2020), who does not seek to hide his connections with the Kremlin. A closeness which recently resulted in the blocking in Congress of an envelope of 60 billion dollars intended to help Ukraine. For several months, Donald Trump’s Republican troops have united around the refusal to continue the delivery of aid to Ukraine.
Brussels is reluctant to pay Russian assets
A similar scenario almost happened on the Old Continent. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, known to be close to Vladimir Putin, engaged in repeated blackmail by vetoing the release of the aid fund to Ukraine last December during an EU Congress . Before finally lifting it at the beginning of February, and thus releasing 50 billion dollars in aid.
For the countries of the Union, this is a first step before transferring to its ally the interests and profits generated by Russian assets. Nearly 1.7 billion euros should be paid to Ukraine soon. An amount that the head of the Ukrainian government considers “insignificant”, compared to “the 200 billion euros (of Russian assets, Editor’s note) which are blocked on accounts in Belgium”.
And the Ukrainian Prime Minister emphasized: “The confiscation of all frozen Russian property “interests us for two reasons: one because we need it and two because it is a punishment for the Russian aggressor” who “ must pay” for having attacked and violated the sovereignty of Ukraine. But the West opposes the existence of numerous obstacles. Both political and geopolitical.
What about the 16 billion euros?
In addition, Denys Chmygal also demanded accountability from his European allies this Monday, ensuring that his country had never received the 16 billion euros in aid collected jointly by Poland and the European Commission during two conferences of donors in Warsaw in 2022, in the wake of the Russian invasion.
“We don’t know what happened to these funds. How were they spent, what did they support?” In any case, the Ukrainian Prime Minister is categorical: kyiv “received nothing.”