In the past week, leading European Union officials have repeatedly referred to Russia’s frozen assets, and not without reason.
The EU, together with the G7 countries, remains the custodian of hundreds of billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets. Yet, despite Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine, not a single dollar from these reserves has been confiscated.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has been resisting the aggressor for more than three years, deepening its budget deficit and incurring colossal losses. Our country’s growing financial needs are largely covered by international partners’ budgetary funds, but the dynamics of global political support are constantly shifting.
Against this backdrop, one obvious question arises:
why does the West not use the most convenient source of financing for Ukraine’s defence — Russia’s frozen funds?
Unfortunately, there is still no satisfactory answer. What cannot be denied, however, are the numbers. The amount of aid to Ukraine already provided from taxpayers’ pockets is soon to catch up with the value of Russian assets that those very same partners are so reluctant to confiscate.
Frozen billions
After Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the G7 countries froze tens of billions of dollars in Russian sovereign assets. While no official consolidated figure has been disclosed, approximate estimates suggest the following:
United States — $38 billion United Kingdom — $26 billion Japan — $58 billion Germany — $55 billion France — $71 billion Canada — $16 billion Italy — undisclosed.
Altogether, some $264 billion in Russian sovereign assets remain frozen across G7 jurisdictions. Beyond this, the largest share of frozen Russian assets — around $227 billion (€195 billion) — is held in the Belgian securities depository and bank Euroclear.
In total, this amounts to roughly $500 billion. And even that is not the full picture.
The goose that lays the golden eggs
Although the largest “gold reserve” of Russian assets at Euroclear is frozen, it continues to generate income through securities market investments. According to EU legislation and investment agreements, this money no longer belongs to Russia, it is the property of the financial group itself.
Euroclear’s official data shows income earned from frozen Russian assets as follows:
2022 — €821 million 2023 — €4.4 billion 2024 — €6.9 billion First half of 2025 — €2.7 billion
A portion of this revenue is used for taxes and operating expenses, but the funds still circulate within the EU economy. Thus, since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Euroclear has already earned around €15 billion from frozen Russian assets. In this context, it is hardly surprising that the Prime Minister of Belgium has publicly opposed confiscating Russian assets in Ukraine’s favour, citing the “legal complexity of the process.”
Meanwhile, the EU agreed to provide Ukraine with about €18 billion from Euroclear’s income on frozen Russian assets as part of the broader $50 billion G7–EU loan package known as Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration.
Partners approved this package in June last year, pledging assistance to Ukraine backed by interest from Russian assets for an indefinite period.
In reality, this is a step away from, rather than toward, confiscation,
since under the proposed scheme the bulk of Russia’s frozen $450 billion in assets would remain untouched.
Instead, what is being discussed is settling Ukraine’s obligations to its creditors at the expense of the EU — more precisely, through Euroclear’s revenues.
So far, under the G7–EU loan scheme, Ukraine has received more than half of the pledged funds through disbursements from the EU, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Yet the lion’s share of this support still comes from budgetary money, not Russian funds.
Moreover, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy calculated that from early 2022 through the end of 2024, Ukraine’s international partners provided over €267 billion ($300 billion) in financial, military, humanitarian, and other support — roughly $90 billion per year. The EU has been, and remains, the leading donor, a fact that should not be overlooked.
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With roughly $450 billion in Russian sovereign assets frozen, the G7 and the EU have, since 2022, given Ukraine around $300 billion in financial assistance from their own budgets. They have also approved a $50 billion loan secured by the future revenue from frozen Russian assets — a loan unlikely to ever be repaid by Russia itself.
One does not need to be a mathematician to see that Russia’s frozen sovereign funds could more than cover these expenditures.
And yet, the West continues to finance Ukraine’s support from taxpayers’ pockets, while Russian money has remained untouched, and even profitable for financial institutions, for over three years.
As a result, taxpayers grow weary of funding Ukraine from their own wallets, and political backing in partner countries declines with each new election — as we now see, for example, in Poland.
When it comes to confiscating the aggressor’s assets, there is no legal or economic trap. The obstacle is political indecision.
Whether the world can break through this political paralysis will determine not only Ukraine’s future, but also the global credibility of the international community and its professed values of democracy, peace, and human life.
Publications in the Expert Opinion section are not editorial articles and solely reflect the author’s point of view.
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