Lhe Ukrainian government’s 2024 budget, voted in Parliament on Thursday November 9, forecasts a huge deficit, of around $44 billion (41.22 billion euros), mainly to finance the national war effort. The country depends on foreign aid, which has already reached 34 billion dollars since the start of the year, and 31 billion in 2022. While its needs for 2024 will be at least as important, the support of its two main donors shows signs of weakness.
The promise by the European Union (EU) to pay 50 billion euros over three years until 2027 faces opposition from Hungary. As for the envelope of 61.4 billion dollars promised by American President Joe Biden, it is blocked in Congress. In the long term, Ukraine fears tiring of its supporters. Not only does the war in the Middle East divert the attention of the international community, but its counter-offensive does not meet with the hoped-for success.
The country is therefore eyeing another source of income, much less dependent on the vagaries of the internal politics of its allies. At the beginning of November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he wanted “take the money” of Russian assets frozen by Western countries since February 2022. The sums at stake are significant, since 300 billion dollars have been frozen, including almost 200 billion euros in the EU alone. The Central Bank of Russia had placed part of its foreign currency reserves there. It can no longer have access to it since the imposition of sanctions by Brussels following the invasion of Ukraine.
These assets must now be used for its reconstruction. At 1er September 2023, the destruction was estimated at $151 billion according to the Kyiv School of Economics, and the country will need at least double that to rebuild. Proponents of confiscation cite the precedent of 1992, when, after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the United States froze 32 billion in Iraqi assets before transferring them to a fund managed by the United Nations intended to compensate the victims for their losses.
Loss of Western influence
After the deadly and destructive invasion of Ukraine, can we imagine that the frozen assets would one day be returned to Russia? Moscow obviously demands it… by invoking international law, which is not lacking in salt. As explained by Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University (Massachusetts), in an article in New York Times published in September: “There is simply no basis [en droit international] to say that Russia can violate Ukraine’s sovereignty while invoking its own sovereignty as an inviolable shield. »
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