However, the EU has already started contingency plans. On Tuesday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell proposed a plan to send the interest accrued on frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, estimating that it could provide the Kiev regime around €3 billion a year, a far cry from the roughly $113 billion the US has provided since the special operation began.
“The only way that Europe could possibly make up [for the lack of US aid to Ukraine] that is needed to support the Kiev regime is by stealing all of Russia’s frozen assets, possibly tanking the Euro and crashing the EU’s reputation as a reputable place to store currency reserves for transactions,” Mark Sleboda, a security and international relations expert told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Thursday. “And they are very loath to do that, particularly Belgium and Switzerland, where most of Russia’s frozen assets, some $200 billion worth, is stored.”
Outside of that “nuclear option” Sleboda said that the only other path for Europe would put “a much more severe drain” on their national budgets and economies.
“Unless all Europeans are willing to forgo their social benefits and other perks of life in the European Union that they have become accustomed to, to prop up this regime in Kiev, there’s simply no way,” Sleboda explained, noting that the recent €50 billion aid package approved by the EU is spread out over four years.
Of the plan to send the interest accrued on Russian frozen assets to Ukraine, which co-host Jamarl Thomas described as “theft,” Sleboda said he doubts Borrell’s legal justification. “They’ve basically waved a magic wand and said ‘it’s legal,’” he began. “You can always find one lawyer. 100 of the most reputable lawyers may say ‘This is against international law, this is against every principle of capitalism that we’ve ever erected at Bretton Woods,’ but there’s always one guy that [if you] say ‘Hey, if we give you $10, will you say this is legal?’ ‘It’s legal.’”
Russia, Sleboda argued, is “in the driver’s seat” in the conflict. “Their military-industrial complex is out producing all of NATO put together in the key types of munitions… the Kiev regime is also suffering enormous manpower losses at this point that they don’t seem to be able to replace, and then the economic problem. The money that they need to support the government, much less the military, because– economically– the regime at this point, depends entirely on NATO member state money as well.”