LONDON: The British government will not unilaterally expropriate frozen Russian assets after the failure of the EU summit, the Financial Ti...
LONDON: The British government will not unilaterally expropriate frozen Russian assets after the failure of the EU summit, the Financial Times reported quoting a government official as saying.
"We won’t move without international partners," the official said, adding that the UK would "continue to work closely with the G7 and EU on Ukraine financing."
Earlier the kingdom was prepared to allocate eight billion pounds ($10.6 billion) to Kiev at the expense of Russian assets.
The FT said that that the UK government has decided that the World Bank's $2 billion loan guarantees will be provided to Ukraine ahead of schedule, as early as 2026, to meet its emergency financial needs. It said that the kingdom remains committed to providing three billion pounds ($4 billion) annually for military support to Ukraine until 2030.
The EU summit ended in the early hours on Friday after a discussion that lasted 17 hours and failed to overcome Belgium’s resistance and agree on the expropriation of Russian assets. The meeting participants confirmed their indefinite freezing without any real prospect of a voluntary return in the foreseeable future.
The EU countries decided to provide Ukraine with a 90 billion euro financing in 2026-2027. The union will raise the money through a loan, which Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic officially refused to participate in. Ukraine will receive the loan at zero percent and repay it if it receives full reparations from Russia, the amount of which, according to Brussels, exceeds half a trillion euros. The European Commission previously declared Ukraine insolvent and on this basis announced that it could not provide loans to it. However, it was forced to finance Kiev directly on a grant basis.
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