Ukraine must win against Russia: EU

Celina Ali

Brussels: The European Union emphasised on Tuesday that Ukraine must win the war against Russia.

“Ukraine should win this war. Half the world has imposed sanctions against Russia (be­cause of the Ukraine invasion). Nobody wants Russia to have its way,” Peter Stano, lead spokesper­son for the European Exter­nal Action Service, told a group of visiting Pakistani journalists.

Peter Stano, lead spokesperson for the European External Action Service, told a group of visiting Pakistani journalists that Russia must be halted because it was a risk to other nations as well.

“Ukraine ought to win this war. Half the world has forced sanctions against Russia (because of the Ukraine invasion). No one needs Russia to have its way,” he said. Stano said the EU expected Pakistan to be on the proper side and support Ukraine. “We are not against Pakistan-Russia ties but any trade money is being utilized (by Russia) to smash the Ukrainians,” he added. The representative said that it is up to individual EU member states to determine whether to censure Belarus for supposedly supporting Russia in the war in Ukraine. To a question, Stano said Putin cannot be re­moved like Saddam Hussain or Muammar Gaddafi as Russia was a atomic power.

“Russia is a nuclear power. We cannot remove Putin like them (Hussain and Qaddafi). We have to rely on sanctions (and other such steps),” he maintained.

Last week, EU leaders had entrusted the European Commis­sion to propose legitimate ways to make use of the Russian assets frozen within the coalition to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction.

In a push to discover ways to assist rebuild Ukraine, member state leaders called for sanctioning Russian central bank’s immo­bilised assets that are within the EU to be utilized to finance its re­construction. As this has never been done before, EU experts, legal counselors, and financial specialists have been working on choices and potential legitimate bases to discover a imaginative way to make Russia pay for the damages it caused.

The Commission “will come forward with a proposal and we will focus prudently on the windfall benefits from the im­mobilised assets of the Rus­sian Central Bank,” Commis­sion President Ursula von der Leyen said after the meeting of leaders. The thought to utilize the windfall profits from the mon­ey stuck within the European Union came as ambassadors, financial specialists and legal counselors worked on finding a way to utilize the solidified assets for the modifying of Ukraine, after the EU leaders entrusted them to explore ways.

“According to the current es­timation, the returns [of wind­fall profits] may well be €3 billion (per year),” Belgian Prime Min­ister Alexander De Croo said after the assembly.

The €3 billion figure comes from the fact that around €100 billion of the Russian Central Bank’s resources are stuck within the Belgium based Euroclear clearing house, which is under the European Central Bank’s interest rate of 3%.

The plan is to push for these benefits to be redirected to Ukraine, rather than the ECB, EURACTIV understands, though due to concerns on the budgetary steadiness and interna­tional balance of the eurozone, is still beneath much discussion from leaders. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed: “We are not for or against it. No one can be in support of something very concrete at the moment,” point­ing out that the legislative pro­posal has yet to be presented by the EU official.