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The United States has proposed that European countries unfreeze some Russian sovereign assets tied up after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and transfer them to a vehicle overseen by Washington in a bid to restart peace talks.
The idea was floated during discussions in Miami last week between Donald Trump’s peace negotiators and officials from Ukraine, France, Germany, the UK, the EU and NATO, four people briefed on the matter told the FT.
The United States has suggested several possible methods to unfreeze the assets, including transferring them to a new special-purpose financial vehicle overseen by Washington, the sources said.
A U.S. official said the use of frozen Russian assets had been discussed as part of a comprehensive peace deal and that the mechanisms governing how they would be released and where they would be spent were still under discussion.
Many ideas have been put forward about how Moscow’s frozen assets could be used after the war, the U.S. official added. Ukrainian officials involved in the peace talks said the issue had been discussed with the U.S. side in previous meetings.
European delegates rejected the plan presented by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. But it surprised European capitals and kyiv, raising questions about U.S. intentions and its radically different approach to pressuring Moscow to end its invasion of Ukraine.
Western allies have frozen around €260 billion in Russian state assets in 2022 in response to Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with most of that held in the EU.
Ukraine received a 45 billion euro loan from G7 countries, financed from interest earned on fixed European assets, but many European capitals are opposed to using the underlying assets, citing legal concerns.
The bloc’s leaders pledged late last year to use those assets to finance Ukraine’s reconstruction if Russia failed to pay war reparations. But any decision to unfreeze these assets would require consensus within the 27-member EU, which is unlikely.
A similar asset freeze proposal was included a year ago in the Trump administration’s 28-point peace plan, which failed to gain traction.
kyiv and some European states have called for frozen assets to be used to help Ukraine.
The U.S. official said Washington had asked kyiv to provide a proposal for how funds, regardless of the source, would be spent and to work with the World Bank to implement reforms to combat corruption and create accountability.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Russian state media on Wednesday as saying that Moscow would “make every possible effort to secure the return of stolen assets.”
“This includes legal work, court proceedings and prosecutions,” he said.
European officials at the meeting said they were opposed to giving up control over the assets and sending them back to Moscow, the sources added.
“They were told it just wouldn’t happen,” said one of those present.
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