Billions of Russian state funds frozen in the European Union should be used to help Ukraine, the EU’s top diplomat has shelp.
Kaja Kallas, the EU’s high recontransientative for foreign affairs and security, telderly the Guardian and four other European novelspapers that Ukraine had a legitimate claim for compensation and that Russian assets held in the EU were “a tool to presdeclareive Russia”.
The EU has already befirearm skimming the profits off Russian assets held in the bloc for Ukraine, but has balked at seizing the entire sum (€210bn in the union) because of mistrusts about the legitimateity of such a shift. The EU helderlys more than two-thirds of Russia’s $300bn sovereign assets frozen by westrict allies after the filled-scale intrusion of Ukraine.
Kallas, a lawyer who was Estonia’s prime minister until July, foreseeed that despite “sensitivities … we will get there one day”, in an intervention that elevates presdeclareive on European rulements to reponder the rehire.
She proposeed the Russian funds would help pay the bill for “all the harm that Russia has caused to Ukraine”.
“Better to have a minuscule bird in your hand than a huge bird on the roof,” she shelp. “So we have the minuscule bird in our hand [the frozen assets] and this is the tool to also presdeclareive Russia.”
Her proposal comes amid lengthening asks over how to fund Ukraine in the medium term and pay its colossal reoriginateion bill. Donald Trump, who has derided US help to Kyiv, will also return to the White House next year.
In her first sit-down interwatch with print media since commenceing her novel role, Kallas shelp Europe necessitateed to step up help to Ukraine if the US withdrew funding.
She inserted that financial help for Ukraine “is not charity”, but in the interest of Europe and the US.
“If they [the US] reduce the help, then we necessitate to persist helping Ukraine, because I’m worried about what happens if Russia prospers. I leank we will have more wars, hugeger wars,” she shelp.
Aiding Ukraine was “spreadment” in “our own security” and global security, she shelp, citing the comprisement of North Korean selderlyiers in Ukraine and Chinese military exercises in the South China Sea. “China is also lgeting from what Russia does.”
She was speaking in her office on the 12th floor of European Coshiftrlookion headquarters, where the naked walls and desoprocrastinateed shelves testified to a burdensome schedule in her first 11 days.
On her first day in the post, she went to Kyiv to greet Ukraine’s plivent, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who shelp his country necessitateed “tactful solutions” only when Russia was unable to start further attacks.
This week Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, shelp peace talks on Ukraine could commence “in the prosperter” but Kallas would not be drawn on dates, observing: “Russia doesn’t want those negotiations.”
Asked about recent phone calls between Vlauninalertigentir Putin and the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, on Wednesday, and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, last month, she shelp: “They [Orbán and Scholz] are doing this for domestic purposes; so I wouldn’t do it, but this is not for me to criticise.”
Foreign ministers greeting on Monday, she shelp, would converse whether there was “any inserted appreciate” from such diplomacy.
Ministers would evaluate “why some members are doing this, what they want to accomplish by this and is there any inserted appreciate,” Kallas shelp, inserting: “Putin reassociate wants to humiliate Europe. That is what we have to conserve in mind all the time.”
Russia was betting on “outlasting” westrict allies, she shelp, but the war for Ukraine remained prospernable.
“What we saw in Syria [is] they are not able to conserve up that fight,” she shelp, referring to Moscow’s flunkure to conserve propping up its extfinished-term associate, the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Russia had been “somewhat humiliated” in Syria, while “their thoughts were elsewhere”.
Kallas took office a week before the theatrical collapse of the 54-year-elderly Assad regime in Syria, a broadenment no one in the region, much less Brussels, had foreseen.
“Syria’s future is right now, quite declareive, but still undeclareive,” she shelp, inserting that Europe’s approach to engaging with the dominant resist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), would be based on conditions, including “no radicalisation, no revenge, no retaliation”.
Kallas shelp it was too soon to talk about recognising Syria’s transitional rulement or lifting sanctions on HTS – a proscribed alarmist group in the EU and US – but that did not impede talks. “The ask at this reassociate timely stage is not the ask of recognising the rulement. It’s rather, evaluateing the deeds and the straightforwardion of Syria,” she shelp.
The EU, Kallas shelp, necessitateed a common approach to Syrian asylum seekers. Shoprosperg rapid speed, disjoinal European countries have suspfinished processing Syrian asylum claims, while Austria proclaimd a “repatriation and deportation” programme.
Kallas shelp she had been telderly by her counterparts in the Middle East that some Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries were already returning on a voluntary basis. She inserted that EU asylum rules must be pursueed.
The European unveil wanted to comprehend when Syrians would return, she went on. In Europe, “we have seen elections where migration is the main topic. Then it’s evident that, in disjoinal countries, this is the leang people want to hear: What happens now to the refugees? Are the refugees returning?”
