Russia, basically during the entire period of the reign of Vladimir Putin, waged a kind of war. The West has done business with it despite the conflicts in Chechnya and Georgia, the airstrikes on Aleppo in Syria, the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass. Even now, after February 24, when the Russians began their invasion of Ukraine, business is still going strong. Maybe not like a few months ago, but Russia is still bound by a network of agreements with EU countries and companies.

However, it’s hard not to feel that the war in Ukraine has changed something about Putin’s approach to Russia. European politicians are increasingly talking about the need to confiscate Russian assets in the West. We are not only talking about the assets of the oligarchs, but also about the assets estimated at around 300 billion dollars. reserve of the Central Bank of Russia. If that happens, it will be a breakdown of the rules of trade and business in a democratic part of the world. After all, there is a cult of property rights at the very heart of the West.

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I support this solution because I believe it is a logical step. We got that money in our pockets, so someone explain to me why it could be done with afghan money and not with russian money said EU Commissioner Josep Borrell.

US President Joe Biden and Charles Michel, President of the European Council, also discussed the confiscation of Russian assets. As you can see, the idea is not a voice of lower-level officials, but such expectations of frozen Russian assets in the West are advanced by high-level politicians.

Previously, for many years, the West had pursued a policy of turning a blind eye to imperialism, which revived the aggressiveness and dangerousness of its Russian neighbors.

More and more countries are talking openly about this possibility. Americans and Canadians talk about it directly. Individual countries of the European Union too – says in an interview with money.pl Jan Strzelecki of the Polish Economic Institute.

Strzelecki believes that if we can achieve supranational consent for such a move, it will cement the US-European transatlantic alliance with Japan’s participation. It will also deter countries from breaking the international order. Showing that the penalty for such actions is high.

Seizure of an amount estimated at more than 300 billion dollars. Russia’s reserves would be a powerful blow that Russia would not be able to respond to on the scale it would like. There are simply no such tools.

– Russia’s response is limited. No one keeps a reserve of foreign currency in rubles. It will be conducive to make such a decision. However, we are far from confiscation, but I am positively surprised by the number of votes in favor of such a movement. Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine mean that more and more politicians support such an idea – stresses Jan Strzelecki of the PIE.

So far, despite Russia’s aggressive actions against Ukraine or Georgia, the West has nevertheless endeavored not to cut ties. And Russia’s foreign and domestic policy continued to be revisionist and based on resentment. Recall that one of the demands made by Russia in December 2021 to Western leaders was to return to the security system before NATO enlargement in 1997..

Putting confiscation of assets belonging to Russia and oligarchs on the sanctions list on the options table is an idea that goes against the way the West handled Russian affairs before February 24.

Suffice to say that when the Russians were already bringing their troops to the border with Ukraine, Nord Stream 2 had already been completed and was quietly awaiting certification from the German authorities.

More than half of Russian reserves are in the West. We are talking about 300 billion dollars that could be used to rebuild Ukraine after the ravages of war. It would be a move affecting the functioning of the entire global economy and international relations. It would be an unprecedented move in terms of scale. There will be no turning back on this decision – Jan Strzelecki tells us.

The deputy director of the Center for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding, Łukasz Adamski, believes that Russia’s demands from December have convinced many that the country is on a collision course with the West, and the war only confirmed this belief.

The first warning for the West was the annexation of Crimea, but on February 24 everyone probably came to the conclusion that there was no more business as usual with Russia. It was a decision that turned the situation around – says Łukasz Adamski on money.pl.

In his opinion, the question of the confiscation of Russia’s reserves arises from the debate on how radically the West should act towards Russia.

– In the first weeks of the war, when it was feared that Russia would achieve its goals and therefore it was necessary to have influence in the Kremlin, the reserves were frozen, but it was practically not no question of their confiscation. However, the mood in the West became more radical after the Bucza massacre and when it turned out that the Ukrainian army had withstood the first strike and was partially capable of carrying out a counter-offensive around kyiv and then Kharkiv – says Łukasz Adamski.

He recalls that Ukraine is struggling with a powerful army and that before the outbreak of the war, it was one of the poorest countries in Europe.

A huge amount of money will be needed for reconstruction, and for that we need huge loans to support the economy and buy weapons. It would take a bureaucratic effort to find such money in the West. In this case, the confiscation of Russian funds is the right political signalbut also a relatively simple gesture, because the money is there, it is enough to find an appropriate legal formula – adds the expert.

You can talk about war reparations when the peace is signed. We still do not know how the war will end, but one thing is certain – Ukraine is already experiencing serious problems resulting from the devastation of the war, the suspension of many sectors of the economy, these problems are only escalating. worsen day by day, and Russian money, as Borrell said – they are in Western pockets.

Michał Krawiel, journalist at money.pl