The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a bill that would set in motion the process for confiscating Russian assets and using those funds to rebuild Ukraine. By a vote of 20 to 1 (Rand Paul dissenting because, of course, he did), the Senate approved and sent to the floor the "Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity (REPO) for Ukrainians Act."
The House Foreign Affairs Committee has passed a similar bill, also with overwhelming bipartisan support. About $6 billion in Russian assets are in the United States, while over $300 billion are held worldwide.
This is not a difficult issue to understand. On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine without cause. Sorry vatniks, being angry about a neighboring state's foreign and domestic policies is not a cause for invasion. Being angry because you believe a bullsh** story about Gorbachev (who was head of the USSR) being promised NATO would not expand (he wasn't) doesn't give the head of a completely different country (Russia) a right to military action.
The UN General Assembly, by a vote of 94-14, declared that Russia was responsible for the war and war reparations. This gives the US all the legal standing it needs to move in an international version of "civil forfeiture" to take possession of Russian state assets and the property of sanctioned Russian oligarchs. The main target, though, is Russian national assets, like central bank deposits.
I'm particularly in favor of selling off the personal property of sanctioned Russians. While I title my updates "Putin's War," the invasion of Ukraine is no more Putin's war than World War II was Hitler's war. This could not have happened without an army of super-rich enablers validating Putin's megalomania. As the odds of herding them to a gallows are remote, they need to feel financial pain.
While the US bill targets Russian central bank assets, the EU bankers are having a case of the squirts over the thought. Their financial reasons sound like bullsh**, and one can't escape the feeling that they are deathly afraid of what the Kremlin has on them getting out. The working plan in the EU is to confiscate private assets and to take the interest from Russian national bank accounts. The yacht confiscation side of the equation is doing well.
Germany confiscated the yacht from Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov which costs $600 million. pic.twitter.com/OG9b4ioTzJ
— KyivPost (@KyivPost) March 3, 2022
La Republica: In the Italian port of Imperia, the yacht "Lady M" of Russian Oligarch Alexei Mordashov was confiscated.
— Captain Singh, FICArb, 73K (@captsingh) March 5, 2022
And in the port of San Remo, Italy, Russian Oligarch Gennady Timchenko's yacht "Lena" was confiscated. pic.twitter.com/cdZiwsiJ8t
The world's largest sailing yacht of 🇷🇺 oligarch Andrey Melnichenko worth €530 million was confiscated in Italy pic.twitter.com/q2PP89bIxa
— Alex (@alex_avoigt) March 12, 2022
According to The New York Times, the $156 million yacht of Russian 🇷🇺 oligarch Andrei Skoch will be confiscated, by the USA 🇺🇸, from its marina in Dubai 🇦🇪.
— Jason Jay Smart (@officejjsmart) December 2, 2022
Skoch voted to incorporate Ukraine’s 🇺🇦 occupied territories into Russia 🇷🇺. pic.twitter.com/jVhuyejJDt
Foreign Policy ran a story in November that laid out a parade of horribles if we were mean to the Russians. They range from the ludicrous to the outright stupid.
If you want a more erudite discussion from people who think their opinions on the law are more powerful than the will of Congress, I'd recommend these links from the nutty leftist Lawfare blog here | here | here.
Russia's foreign assets will come nowhere near repairing the damage it has done in Ukraine. Reparations, in my view, are less about rebuilding Ukrainian cities than making it clear that behavior like that exhibited by Russia is unacceptable. Hopefully, it will be a message to Western corporations that they invest in rogue or semi-rogue states like Russia and China at their own risk. If we do confisctate Russian assets, the Russians have vowed to do the same to American assets in Russia. Good on them. If you invested your money in a criminal enterprise masquerading as a country, you deserve whatever you get.
