EU says might seize €300b from Russia to rebuild Ukraine as scale of the real damage remains unknown

Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, stated on Wednesday that the EU might be able to confiscate €300bn of Russian Central Bank funds and use them to reconstruct Ukraine.

She suggested that the €19 billion of funds held by Russian oligarchs that are currently frozen could be added to the reconstruction fund for Ukraine, which has an estimated €600 billion worth of damage from the Russian invasion.

She declared that they have the capability to make Russia suffer the consequences, noting that they have locked away 300 billion euros of the Russian Central Bank's reserves and frozen 19 billion euros from Russian oligarchs.

She proposed that with the help of partners, they could create a system to manage these funds and use the money for Ukraine.

"And once the sanctions are lifted, these funds should be used so that Russia pays full compensation for the damages caused to Ukraine," she said.

"We will work on an international agreement with our partners to make this possible. And together, we can find legal ways to get to it. Russia's horrific crimes will not go unpunished."

THE SCALE OF THE DAMAGE

The Kyiv School of Economics had previously estimated the cost of destruction from Russian forces to their buildings and infrastructure as $127 billion, but this calculation was made at the beginning of September and does not take into account the continued attacks on civilian energy infrastructure that have occurred since then.

At the time, Housing had the most expensive damage, costing $50.5 billion. 136,000 residential buildings were damaged or destroyed, which included 120,000 single-family homes and more than 15,000 apartments. This amounted to around 7% of all housing in Ukraine.

Transportation infrastructure had the second highest expense, coming in at $35.3bn. Roads suffered the most, with $26.6bn in direct destruction, while railroads had $4.3bn in damage.

The president also suggested creating a UN-sponsored tribunal to investigate and prosecute Russia's "crime of aggression".