Two things to add on the question of asset seizure that haven't been mentioned yet:
Firstly, the legal issue is in fact incredibly complex, as acknowledged by Janet Yellen (the "international law" the West claims to be defending becomes a little less sacrosanct if one side can simply rewrite those laws when convenient). This conversation started with someone saying they had no idea why the West doesn't just seize the assets no matter the consequences or precedent, but it's nowhere near as simple as that. Economic reprisals during war are the prerogative of injured states, not of third countries. Ukraine exercised this right by seizing around $880 million in Russian assets within its borders in May 2022. But Ukraine's allies are not at war with Russia (hence the crux of the illegality). The West can't have it both ways, they can't claim wartime powers while still insisting they're not at war with Russia.
Also, there's the question of how that 300 billion is to be distributed. When Biden had Zelenskiy visit the US at the end of December to publicly beg for more money, the Biden Admin produced charts and graphs (they
literally produced charts and graphs, it was comical) to show each senator how much their individual states were profiting from the Ukraine war. It was part of their strategy of temporarily shifting the narrative from "Ukraine is defending global democracy" to "The Ukraine war is a great job сreation scheme for America". 35 states in total were shown to be making a net profit out of the war through weapons contracts. But Europe does not and will never have anything close to America's capacity for supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs, and neither does Japan or South Korea (ironically due to America forbidding it - yay sovereignty). When it comes to military - as opposed to economic - assistance, Ukraine can do nothing more useful with those 300 billion dollars than send it back over to Washington. "We need to seize Russian assets and give them to Ukraine" is a loosely defensible position, at least morally. The more accurate "The US should compel France and Belgium to hand Russian money over to American military contractors" is less so.
Don't get me wrong, there will be an announcement on February 24th that the West is going to send the profits on Russian assets to Ukraine. Biden has already channeled David Brent again by saying Ukraine needs another "morale boost" on the 2nd anniversary of the war. And
some of the assets will eventually be seized and used for 'reconstruction', there's a legal path to that from what I've read. But the notion that 300 billion dollars are going to be "sent to Ukraine" is a non-starter. The problems it will create far outweigh the problems it will solve, and besides which (really the only point that matters...), it is economically unnecessary. US and EU aid to Ukraine has so far amounted to way more than $100 billion per year. This sum is sustainable for the transatlantic economy, if they're serious about supporting Ukraine long-term (they're not but that's another issue).
So to close out my first point, I'm 99% sure the West will go with the far less risky approach of funding Ukraine with the several billion euros in annual profits accruing from Russian assets. This will redirect income streams rather than touching the principal, making international legal ramifications a lot milder. It also avoids the problematic optics of US senators taking money of the Russian people (that's what the frozen central bank reserves essentially are) held in Europe and re-distributing it to their pals at Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. This new policy will be announced on February 24th, with a huge amount of fanfare. It will change nothing at all about the outcome of the war or its aftermath, but hey, just like those EU membership talks in lieu of new money or weapons...morale-boost I guess.
The 2nd issue to mention has already been touched on above: future negotiations. Despite Raoul's claim a couple of pages ago that Russia has taken no significant territory, Russia currently controls trillions of dollars of Ukrainian assets. At one point it was estimated at 12.4 trillion...
https://markets.businessinsider.com...gy-metals-oil-gas-coal-deposits-secdev-2022-8
...and is now reckoned to be 'down to' around 8 trillion following the autumn 2022 counteroffensives in Kharviv and Kherson. If the lines were frozen now, Ukraine would permanently lose around 40% of its wealth.That's a non-functioning country. No country can survive such a loss and still support a population of around 40 million people (assuming the 10 million who have either left or now find themselves in Russian-controlled territory return). Ukraine needs constant Western help just to pay salaries to their civil servants, never mind the military. That can't continue forever. Prior to the war Ukraine was already the 2nd poorest country in Europe after Moldova. Try running Europe's largest country again with 40% less wealth and resources. 300 billion won't even come close to footing the bill for reconstruction (already estimated at well over a trillion dollars), let alone get the economy back on its feet. I strongly encourage people to stop posting garbage Twitter accounts in this thread like The Institute for the Study of War (a delusional propaganda "think tank" run by Robert Kagan, Victoria Nuland's husband) and the UK's DoD, and follow instead the accounts of Zelenskiy's own circle (Yermak, Podolyak...). They consistently speak about the existential necessity of taking back their land due to the
economic value of it. If Russia keeps what it currently has, Ukraine cannot function as an independent state. They directly state this over and over again when people suggest 'giving' Russia territories in return for peace, but nobody is listening to them. If Russia DID actually control worthless land, as Raoul suggests, they'd have happily signed a 'peace deal' already. But it's not worthless. It's the lifeblood of the Ukrainian economy and they need it back in order to survive.
Hence - future negotiations. Putin wants back into the global financial system. That's America's primary leverage (acknowledged by Yellen in the same speech about the difficulty of seizing Russian money). Legalising the theft of Russian assets massively complicates that. "Once in a generation intellect" Jake Sullivan (even by the subterranean standards of the Biden Admin, a jaw-droppingly stupid individual) has begun to prattle on about a potential future economic "sharing" of the 4 regions Russia has annexed, but all of this entirely misses the point - made repeatedly by Zelenskiy's people - that Ukraine cannot allow itself to lose what Russia has taken to
any degree. They're not saying "send us more weapons" because they love fighting, they're saying it because taking back their land is the only way Ukraine survives as a viable state. Giving Russia the territories it currently controls is a slow economic death for Ukraine. I am seemingly the only person in this thread who thinks Putin is a very rational actor who WILL negotiate in good faith with a competent West. He has a 23 year record of hundreds of thousands of deals with non-Western countries which have not been broken, at some point the West may want to take a look at itself for its role in this shitshow (spoiler alert, it won't). There are, I believe, things the West can still do to ensure Ukraine gets out of this with a not-terrible deal (they're never going to get a good deal now). The problem is that 22 months into the war, there is still nobody offering real leadership on Ukraine's behalf, they're still just spewing out empty "morale-boosting" nonsense.
As I wrote in a previous post, Ukraine has no good options now. It is going to lose the war and Russia will achieve the 4 objectives set out at the start (occupation of Ukraine never being one of them). The standard of Western "leaders" is the lowest I've ever known it and Ukraine is unfortunate to be in this mess during the weakest era in living memory of American and European 'leadership'. Mike Johnson gave an interview yesterday and reiterated that he's not going to approve more Ukraine funding until Biden provides (I quote) "a clear endgame in Ukraine. A clear strategy. A clear statement of what our goals there are". That's problematic, because there is no endgame, there is no strategy, and they have no idea what their goals are (for the record, more funding will be approved, probably in February. This brinkmanship over the border is just political theatre). The ONLY way Ukraine could ever 'win' this war was by militarily defeating Russia. Zelenskiy has said this a thousand times, to his credit he has zero tolerance for all this meaningless Western bullshit about how "Putin has already lost because Ukraine is still a free state!". The West decided not to let Ukrainian victory happen when they had the chance. Now it's my firm belief and bedrock conviction that Ukraine will just be the latest American project to be led down the garden path and then tossed aside when it becomes inconvenient. The Kurds and Afghans can commiserate.
