Cautious Response To Ukraine's Proposals For Russian Reparations

Ukraine is facing a battle to persuade its western allies, including the UK, to back its proposal for any peace settlement with Moscow to include multibillion-dollar reparations by Russia, in part using seized Russian state and oligarch assets.

- Patrick Wintour

Ukraine is lobbying the UN general assembly to adopt a resolution that will become the basis for the creation of an international compensation mechanism that could lead to the seizure of as much as $300bn (£260bn) of Russian state assets overseas.

The US Department of Justice said in June that the US and its allies had frozen $30bn of Russian elite assets and $300bn of Russian central bank assets held overseas.

Ukraine's deputy justice minister, Iryna Mudra, was in London last week to discuss the issue with the Foreign Office after lobbying the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, along with Olena Zelenska, the wife of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. A former banker, Mudra has been at the helm of the detailed discussions on reparations, holding talks in Germany, Paris and Brussels, and has had talks with Elizabeth Rosenberg, the US treasury department assistant secretary whose remit includes financial sanctions.