The G7 agreed in June to use the interest from frozen Russian assets to guarantee a loan totaling $50 billion to Ukraine.
As part of this program, the United States “announces (Wednesday) that it will provide loans to Ukraine in the amount of 20 billion dollars, which will be repaid by the interest generated by the immobilized Russian sovereign assets”, said Joe Biden.
Thus, he welcomed, “Ukraine can receive the help it needs now without taxpayers having to contribute.”
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According to the Democratic president, this is “a new reminder to Vladimir Putin that the world has rallied behind Ukraine.”
This warning resonates all the more as the US is less than two weeks away from the presidential election.
Former president and Republican candidate Donald Trump regularly criticizes the amount of US aid to Ukraine, which he considers to be too high. Kyiv fears that if he returns to the White House, he will dry up those funds.
Her Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, even declared Monday that her “opponent had made a point of admiring dictators and autocrats around the world” and that “if Donald Trump were president, Vladimir Putin would be sitting in Kiev.”
“Beginning of 2025”
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met on Wednesday afternoon with her Ukrainian counterpart Sergii Marchenko, present in Washington for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
“The G7 has committed to providing 50 billion dollars in loans to Ukraine by the end of this year,” she declared at the beginning of this meeting, which was organized in the Ministry of Finance.
For his part, Sergii Marchenko said that it must be clear to the aggressors that there is a price to pay for invading a democratic country. “I hope we can use this money from the beginning of 2025,” he said.
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In addition to the 20 billion dollars from Washington, another 30 billion will be provided, also in the form of loans, by the other G7 countries, said the deputy national security adviser in the White House for the international economy, Daleep Singh, on Wednesday. a conference call.
The European Parliament voted on Tuesday for a loan of up to 35 billion euros.
“Things have moved,” European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde, who is also in Washington, commented on Wednesday morning. She insisted that these Russian assets were “frozen”, not “confiscated”.
Economic and military assistance
The US participation should be divided into two different aid funds of 10 billion dollars each: economic support and military support.
Financial assistance will be channeled through the World Bank via a fund “subject to solid accountability and transparency measures”, Daleep Singh stressed, and will be particularly targeted at energy and infrastructure.
Military support requires authorization from Congress, and discussions are scheduled for December, he said.
Congress is due for partial renewal during the Nov. 5 election, with a possible majority change in both chambers.
But “the only question that arises is the distribution between financial assistance and security assistance. We will provide $20 billion regardless,” assured Daleep Singh.
He welcomed this mechanism, which is the first: “Never before has a multilateral coalition frozen the assets of an aggressor country and then exploited the value of those assets to finance the defense of the injured party, while respecting the rights of the state and preserving solidarity. ” .
Frozen Russian assets amount to 300 billion euros and generate up to three billion euros in revenue per year.
