DISINFO: Stealing Russia’s frozen assets will help neither Ukraine nor the West
SUMMARY
Stealing Russia’s frozen assets will help neither Ukraine nor the West. Giving Moscow’s reserves to Kiev to keep the bloody proxy war going is somehow being presented as a cost-effective move.
Against a background in which the West’s proxy war against Russia is approaching its endgame, it is remarkable how much delusional thinking still persists. For example, a recent article in the Financial Times is trying to make the case for fully confiscating those Russian central bank reserves that the West has been able to freeze.
With reference to a study produced for the European Parliament, an institution drunk on bellicism and Russophobia, we learn that the “legal risk” of going farther than now by fully confiscating Russian assets is “low.” The authors ask about the costs – as they speculate about them – of not funding Ukraine and a resulting “Russian victory.” But they never even ask if a Russian victory can be prevented at all (no, it cannot) or, more importantly even, about the potential benefits of peace with Russia.
RESPONSE
This is a mix of several recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives framing international aid for Ukraine’s self-defence against Russian aggression as a Western proxy war on Russia, labelling actions to counter Russia’s illicit activities as Russophobia, and pushing the message that Russia’s victory is inevitable by describing actions to help Ukraine as “delusional thinking”.
This disinformation story disingenuously omits that the war is the result of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, while failing to deliver any argument on why the confiscation of Russia’s frozen assets won’t help Ukraine or its allies and presenting Ukraine’s surrender to Russia’s conditions as the only real option. It appeared days after the US gave Ukraine 20 billion dollars funded by profits generated by Russian frozen assets and the EU HRVP Kaja Kallas suggested to use these assets to compensate Ukraine for its destruction. As this idea, however controversial, is gaining traction on both sides of the Atlantic, the ultimate goal of this disinformation story is to deter nations from going ahead with this move.
Claims about supporting Ukraine as a project solely from Western elites, and about the economic burden it entails, have been already debunked here, here, here, here and here.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that seizing Russian assets would plunge the whole world into serious economic troubles, that blind support for Ukraine broke Germany, that the EU screwed its economy by supporting Ukraine and now wants taxpayers to pay, or that instead of crushing Russia, sanctions led to US debt and Europe’s freezing.