EU ambassadors have agreed to use the proceeds of frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine with its military aid.
Source. This was reported by the BBC with reference to a statement by Belgium, which holds the EU presidency.
"The money will be used to support Ukraine's reconstruction and military defence in the context of Russian aggression," the Belgian government said.
During the EU summit in Brussels in March this year, EU leaders failed to agree on the use of profits from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine.
If the plan is given the green light, Kyiv could receive about three billion euros ($3.3 billion) a year.
Earlier, the European Commission proposed that 90% of this amount be used to buy weapons for the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the rest to rebuild the country.
According to Euractiv, the EU will be able to use the excess profits from immobilised Russian assets worth up to three billion euros a year to finance joint arms purchases for Ukraine.
The exact amount of income will depend on interest rates, as about 210 billion euros of frozen assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation are held in accounts of different EU countries in different currencies, Reuters noted.
The head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen confirmed that the ambassadors of 27 EU countries had reached an agreement on the expropriation of the proceeds of frozen Russian assets to purchase weapons for Kyiv.
"I welcome today's political agreement on our proposal to use the proceeds of frozen Russian assets for Ukraine. There could be no stronger symbol and no greater use for this money than to make Ukraine and all of Europe a safer place to live," she tweeted.
Background. As reported, Russia has threatened to retaliate with an "eye for an eye" in case of confiscation of Russian assets in the West. Kremlin spokesman Peskov said that Moscow has a lot of Western money that could be used for countermeasures.