WASHINGTON, April 25. /TASS/. Kiev and Washington are discussing using frozen Russian assets for providing financial assistance to Ukraine, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal told CBS television.
"We have this negotiations with the United States, with all of our partners," he said, according to a transcript of the interview released on Sunday. "This is a very important international issue and task and goal, international goal for all civilized world to find a solution how to take this frozen assets and finance recovery of Ukraine."
Shmygal responded in the affirmative when asked if Ukraine needs up to $5 billion in financial aid every month and said the G20, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank agree with that amount.
"We have many negotiations with G20 countries, their ministers of finances of these countries, the international financial organization, IMF, World Bank," he said. "All of them approve this amount and all of them are in the sense that we need humanitarian support for internally displaced persons."
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said earlier that the US weren’t sure yet if the seized Russian assets could be spent on helping Ukraine as the US needed to weigh the consequences.
On February 24 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in response to a request for help by the heads of the Donbass republics. He stressed that Moscow had no plans of occupying Ukrainian territories. Afterward, the US, EU, UK and some other countries imposed sanctions on Russian individuals and legal entities.