EU to allocate €900 million to Ukraine using frozen Russian assets
Photo: Charles Fries, Deputy Secretary General of the EU External Action Service (eeas.europa.eu)
The European Union will allocate €900 million (approximately $999.83 million) in the coming weeks for the purchase of weapons and ammunition for Ukraine, Charles Fries, Deputy Secretary General of the EU External Action Service, says during the opening of the second Ukraine-EU Defense Industry Forum.
As Fries noted, the support for Ukraine that will be provided over the next two weeks will be funded through extraordinary profits from frozen Russian assets.
"In this way, the EU has now provided a total of €3.3 billion ($3.7 billion - ed.) to support Ukraine and its defense industry," the EU Deputy Secretary General added.
Fries also stated that contracts were signed last week in Lviv to help invest funds into "the most advanced sectors of Ukraine's defense industry, for example, in the production of drones and missiles."
Frozen Russian assets
After the start of the full-scale war, Western countries decided to freeze approximately $300 billion belonging to the Central Bank of Russia. The majority of these funds are held within the EU, particularly at the Belgian clearinghouse Euroclear. Other funds are located in the United States, Japan, and the G7 countries.
The assets remain frozen. G7 representatives have repeatedly emphasized that they will not be unfrozen until Russia compensates Ukraine for the damage it has caused. Meanwhile, the EU has already begun channeling profits generated from these frozen assets to support Ukraine.
Recently, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced that Japan will provide $3 billion to Ukraine using Russian assets.
