WASHINGTON, April 1 Confiscating frozen Russian assets in favor of Ukraine is poetry, US House Speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview with Fox News.
«If we can use the frozen assets of the Russian oligarchs to allow the Ukrainians to fight them, that's pure poetry,» Johnson said.
As Johnson noted, a provision on the confiscation of Russian frozen assets may appear in the bill on new appropriations for Ukraine. In addition, the speaker recalled the proposal of former US President Donald Trump to provide assistance to Kyiv in the form of a loan. “When we don’t just give foreign aid, but establish a relationship where they can return the funds to us at the appropriate time,” the speaker said.
He noted that many concepts will be merged into a bill, which legislators will be able to begin considering upon returning from vacation on April 9.
According to US media reports, Johnson may be trying to convince skeptics in the Republican ranks to vote for approval of the request for assistance to Ukraine using the idea of confiscating Russian assets. Johnson talks about the need to support Kyiv, but blocks a bill already approved by the Senate to allocate $60 billion to it and promises to prepare his own initiative.
It is believed that Johnson is at risk of a rebellion by fellow party members who are dissatisfied with the assistance to Ukraine in principle. They may try to force his removal from office if the bill comes to a vote. The House's Democratic minority is hinting that it is ready to support the speaker in this case.
After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, the EU and G7 countries froze almost half of Russian foreign exchange reserves amounting to about 300 billion euros. About 200 billion euros are in the EU, mainly in the accounts of the Belgian Euroclear — one of the world's largest settlement and clearing systems. The EU is discussing ways to use frozen assets of the Russian Federation to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine. The European Central Bank warned that this could pose reputational risks for the European currency in the long term, and called for “looking beyond this isolated conflict” and looking for other ways to finance Kyiv.
The Kremlin stated that the adoption of such decisions “would be another step in violating all the rules and norms of international law.” The Russian Foreign Ministry called the freezing of Russian assets in Europe theft, noting that the EU is targeting not just the funds of private individuals, but also the state assets of Russia.