The United States has advocated the return of Russian assets frozen in the European Union to Moscow after the conclusion of a peace agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. This is reported by Politico.
According to the publication, when the EU's special representative for sanctions, David O'Sullivan, came to Washington in the summer, American officials made it clear that their position was to return these assets to Russia after any peace agreement was concluded.
Despite US objections, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen continued to work on a plan to use frozen assets to support Ukraine. In a speech on September 10, she stated that the EU intends to mobilize these funds to finance Ukraine through the reparations loan mechanism.
According to one diplomat, Brussels thus sought to consolidate the "European" political formula behind the assets.
The US, however, appears to have been reluctant to accept the idea from the start. After a leaked draft of US President Donald Trump's 28-point peace plan in November, it emerged that he had proposed directing $100 billion of these assets to reconstruction and investment in Ukraine under US control, with the rest of the funds transferred to a separate US-Russian mechanism.
According to several diplomats, it was this clause that caused tensions after the leak, as EU officials were outraged by the possibility that the US would actually divide the assets between itself and Russia, even if some of the funds were formally intended to aid Ukraine.
