BELLEAU, France (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden said on Sunday he had reached an agreement with French President Emmanuel Macron on using profits from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine.
Asked if the two men discussed the matter and reached an agreement, Biden replied “Yes and yes.”
The Group of Seven and the European Union are considering how to use the profits generated by Russian assets tied up in the West to provide Ukraine with a large initial loan now and secure financing from Kiev for 2025.
Around 260 billion euros ($280.9 billion) of Russian central bank funds are frozen around the world, most of it in the EU. The funds generate profits of between 2.5 billion and 3.5 billion euros per year, which the EU says is not contractually owed to Russia and therefore represents a windfall profit.
The idea, defended by the USA, is to use this profit as a constant flow of income to pay off a large loan of 50 billion dollars that could be obtained on the market. Russia claims that any diversion of profits from its frozen funds would amount to theft.
The exploitation of profits from Russian assets has raised concerns in some countries, but a US Treasury official said on Tuesday that the United States and its G7 partners were making progress.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Katharine Jackson; writing by Arshad Mohammed; editing by Scott Malone and Bill Berkrot)
