That is a valid point. I wasn’t thinking about the rebuilding post war bit. Doesn’t the US have its own stash of Russian money. It can send to Ukraine for rebuilding?
A recent assessment from the European Commission, the Government of Ukraine, the World Bank, and the United Nations estimated that at the one-year mark of the invasion, rebuilding Ukraine would cost $411 billion, with aid coming in from both the public and private sectors. This is more than double the size of Ukraine’s pre-invasion economy. The government says it needs some $14 billion to fund critical infrastructure projects in this year alone.
So I’d guess that if anything, the number is higher now, if that represented damage at the one-year mark.
The governments of the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the European Commission seized roughly $300 billion in Russian central bank assets not long after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, an extraordinary sum totaling about half of Russia’s foreign reserves at the time. Most of this money—more than $200 billion—is frozen in European accounts. These governments have also seized tens of billions of dollars in assets belonging to Russian oligarchs and private entities.
So at least two-thirds of it was frozen by European governments. If they take different routes, whatever the Europe does – if it does one thing – will probably be where the larger portion of the funds go.
That is a valid point. I wasn’t thinking about the rebuilding post war bit. Doesn’t the US have its own stash of Russian money. It can send to Ukraine for rebuilding?
Probably. The US did freeze some. I don’t know whether the thing is being collectively-handled or on a per-country basis.
kagis
It sounds like there is some level of collective-decision-making involving both, and that more of the funds are frozen by Europe than the US.
reads further
This talks about both that and reconstruction costs:
https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/how-frozen-russian-assets-could-pay-rebuilding-ukraine
So I’d guess that if anything, the number is higher now, if that represented damage at the one-year mark.
So at least two-thirds of it was frozen by European governments. If they take different routes, whatever the Europe does – if it does one thing – will probably be where the larger portion of the funds go.
I appreciate the further insight! Thank you.