BRUSSELS, December 3. /TASS/. The European Commission has come up with an alternative financing plan to cover Ukraine's military and civilian needs for the next two years, one that doesn't involve the use of frozen Russian assets, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced.

"We are proposing to cover two-thirds of Ukraine’s financing needs for the next two years - this is 90 bln euros. The remainder will be for international partners to cover. The first option is to raise capital on the capital market, backed by the EU budget, and hand it over to Ukraine as a loan. There needs to be unanimity on this solution," she said at a press conference in Brussels.

The second option, she said, remains using balances of the immobilized Russian assets in the EU for a so-called "reparations loan" to Ukraine. This option would need to be okayed by a qualified majority vote at the EU level, she said.

Both proposals will be published after the EU Council carries out further discussions on them.

The President of the European Commission believes that the expropriation of Russian assets in Europe under the reparations loan scheme will allegedly contribute to ending the conflict in Ukraine. According to her, this would allegedly "greatly help the peace negotiations," as it would "send a signal to Russia that the EU will continue to finance Kiev in the long term," and this would enable Ukraine to negotiate "from a position of strength."

On attempts to expropriate frozen Russian assets

In October, the European Commission proposed expropriating approximately 210 bln euros in Russian sovereign assets blocked in EU countries since February 2022 (185 bln euros of which are blocked in accounts at the Euroclear depository in Belgium) under the guise of a so-called reparations loan to finance Kiev's military and budgetary needs in 2026-2027.

This solution was proposed due to the EU's lack of available funds to continue external financing for Ukraine. The European Commission claims that Ukraine will be required to return this money if it receives certain "reparations" from Russia, the amount of which European experts last year estimated at almost half a trillion euros. Even EU institutions themselves do not believe that Russia will make such payments to Ukraine.

This plan was blocked by Belgium at the EU summits on October 1 and 23. Belgium believes it will bear the brunt of Russia's retaliatory measures, as it is under its jurisdiction that Russia's main assets will be seized, and Belgium will be legally violating state guarantees for the inviolability of these assets. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever noted that this step is unprecedented, that no one had even dared to take it during World War II. Therefore, he demanded legal and financial guarantees from EU countries that they will fully share all of Belgium's risks.

Over the following month, the question of guarantees for Belgium remained unresolved, so it continues to oppose the expropriation of assets.

Earlier, in an interview with TASS, Russian Ambassador to Belgium Denis Gonchar stated that regardless of the scheme used to justify the expropriation of Russia's sovereign assets, it would be theft. He stressed that Russia's retaliatory measures "will follow immediately and will force the West to count its losses."