From China to Saudi Arabia, countries want the EU to reject pressure to confiscate over €200 billion of Russian assets.
Countries sympathetic to Russia are demanding the EU drop any notion it might have about a wholesale confiscation of Moscow’s state assets.
Representatives of China, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are privately pushing the EU to continue resisting pressure from the U.S. and U.K. to seize more than €200 billion of Russian state assets it immobilized after February 2022’s invasion of Ukraine to help Kyiv’s reconstruction efforts, four officials with knowledge of the proceedings told POLITICO.
“These countries are very skeptical about the idea,” said one of the officials, granted anonymity because the talks are so sensitive. The concern is, “this would create a precedent” ― in other words, these countries would fear they could be next to lose out.
They’re worried about setting a precedent? War reparations are pretty fucking precedented. The Treaty of Westphalia had indemnity payments involved.
Also, I got curious and checked: the oldest peace treaty, the Egyptian–Hittite peace treaty of 1259 BC didn’t have any indemnity payments. It would have been funny if reparations were that precedented but sadly, they just basically agreed to stop fighting over Syria and made a mutual defense pact.