Ukraine aims to confiscate Russian assets through UN

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 $300 billion of Russian state assets 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’s council of ministers in Strasbourg alongside Olena Zelenska, the wife of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to The Guardian.

A former banker, Mudra has been at the helm of the detailed legal and political discussions on reparations, holding talks in Germany, Paris and Brussels and with the US treasury assistant secretary, Elizabeth Rosenberg.

At the end of the last meeting in Strasbourg, the Council of Europe ministers backed the principle of reparations, but issued a lukewarm statement about Ukraine’s specific proposals, saying it “noted with interest the Ukrainian proposals to establish a comprehensive international compensation mechanism, including, as a first step, an international register of damage”. The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has said reparations would be unlawful under current US law.