The U.S. opposes the EU’s confiscation of Russian assets, The Times reports

The United States does not support the European Union’s plans to confiscate Russian sovereign assets.

This was reported by the British newspaper The Times, citing sources.

According to the report, representatives of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration have privately warned that if Russian assets are confiscated, the European Union and the United Kingdom would have to “pay the money back.”

“Europeans will have to return it,” a source told the paper, adding that the issue of Russian assets is one of the key points of Trump’s peace plan.

As The Times noted, Washington fears that seizing Russia’s sovereign assets would prolong the conflict and deprive the West of leverage over Moscow.

At the end of November, Bloomberg reported that a provision to allocate about $100 billion from frozen Russian assets to a Ukraine Reconstruction Fund was removed from the latest version of the U.S. draft peace plan. The original proposal envisioned the United States receiving 50% of the proceeds from those assets, while unused frozen funds would be directed to a Russia–U.S. investment fund.

On December 12, the EU Council decided to block Russia’s sovereign assets indefinitely. The European Commission hopes to secure a decision at the EU summit on December 18–19 to expropriate €210 billion in Russian assets, €185 billion of which are blocked at Euroclear in Belgium.