PPrime Minister of Ukraine Shmygal allowed the use of frozen Russian assets Kiev is negotiating with Western countries about the possibility of obtaining frozen assets of Russia to spend them on the restoration of Ukraine, said the country’s Prime Minister Denis Shmygal
Denis Shmygal
Ukraine is negotiating with the United States and other Western partners on the possible use of frozen Russian assets to rebuild the country, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal said in an interview with CBS. In a conversation with Shmigal, journalist Margaret Brennan said that there were proposals in the US Congress to send funds to Ukraine from frozen Russian accounts and asked if there were similar agreements between Washington and Kiev.
“We have these negotiations with the United States, with all our partners,” the Ukrainian Prime Minister replied.
He added that the Ukrainian authorities are currently counting losses and assessing the damage to the country’s economy as a whole. “All this should be paid for by Russia,” said Shmygal.
He said that Ukraine now needs from $4 billion to $5 billion a month, and Kiev is negotiating with the World Bank, the IMF and the G20. First of all, we are talking about humanitarian aid for displaced persons in Ukraine, the number of which is about 7 million people, the Ukrainian Prime minister said.
Earlier, Shmygal said that after the end of hostilities, $ 600 billion will be needed to restore Ukraine in the long term, UNIAN reported. Such a sum will be needed not only for the restoration of infrastructure, but also for the development of a new economy and the creation of “European institutions”.
At the end of February, a few days after the start of the special operation in Ukraine, the United States, Canada and the EU decided to block the assets and reserves of the Russian Central Bank. After that, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov stated that due to Western sanctions, Russia lost access to almost half of its reserves – $300 billion out of almost $640 billion.
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According to him, Western countries are also trying to put pressure on China to restrict Russia’s access to reserves in yuan, but expressed hope that this will not happen.
The accounts and property of a number of large Russian businessmen also fell under Western sanctions. After that, yachts were detained in Europe and real estate related to them was frozen. Switzerland reported the blocking of assets for $8 billion, Italy for €900 million, France for €850 million, the Netherlands for€516 million
The press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov called “banditry at the international level” the arrest of the property of Russian businessmen in the West because they were at a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. According to him, this is “the collapse of private property and private business”.
At the beginning of March, Kiev started talking about the desire to receive blocked Russian reserves. As Denis Kudin, Deputy head of the Ministry of Economy of the country, said, Ukraine is discussing with Western partners the mechanism of confiscation of $415 billion of reserves of the Central Bank of Russia. According to him, this amount could be used to restore the Ukrainian economy.
In April, Kiev appealed to the G7 countries with a request to provide assistance to Ukraine in the amount of $ 60 billion, said Oleg Ustenko, adviser to the Ukrainian leader on economic issues. Prior to that, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the country needs $7 billion a month to continue paying pensions and salaries.
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