Belgian Prime Minister: Russian assets will be frozen until the end of the war, but they will not be confiscated because it is an “act of war”

Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever said at the Ukrainian Breakfast on the occasion of the World Economic Forum in Davos that Russian assets in the European Union will be frozen until the end of the war. Their fate will be decided after Ukraine and Russia sign a peace agreement.

According to de Wever, if it were up to him, every euro of this money would go to help Ukraine, and he would be very sad to see even one euro return to Moscow.

But the assets will not be confiscated, because international law must be respected. De Wever stated that this was not done even during World War II, and called the confiscation of assets "an act of war", and Europe is not at war with Russia.

So until the end of hostilities, Europe will finance Ukraineʼs military efforts, because Ukrainians are "fighting for all of us".

• More than half of the Russian Central Bankʼs assets frozen in the European Union are stored in the Belgian financial institution Euroclear, from where the EU planned to allocate €140 billion in reparations credit to Ukraine.
• The Belgians feared that Russia might sue them in international investment arbitration under an investment protection agreement between Belgium, Luxembourg, and the USSR.
• Earlier, a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team Mykola Yurlov told Babel that the European Union was ready to provide Belgium with serious guarantees that covered what Ukraine believed to be minor legal risks. However, the Belgians are categorically against it.

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