OPINION: A Dirty Little Secret

Ok, so let’s get this straight. 

Russia invades Ukraine, causes $473 billion in damage, and counting, according to the latest WB/Kyiv School estimates, and Ukraine runs a tab of $100 billion a year in fighting the war.

The West then discovers that, hey presto, $330 billion of Russian central cash is actually sat in Western bank accounts, and now immobilized.

So some clever folk – Bob Zoellick, Philip Zelikow, Yuliya Ziskina, Larry Summers (including me in the effort) et al come up with the genius idea of “Hey why don’t we use these Russian assets to help fund Ukraine’s war effort and reconstruction as this will be making Russia pay.” They even provide the legal basis for doing this LEGALLY in “Countermeasures”.

Western politicians think that’s a great idea.

But meanwhile all those greedy Western businesses with assets stranded in Russia – because they ignored their own governments advice, the writing on the wall from Putin’s invasions of TransDniestr, Georgia, annexation of Crimea, invasion of Donbas, poisoning of Litvinenko, Skrypal, as they preferred to reap windfall profits and take Putin’s forty pieces of silver and then whinge and lobby to all their friends in Western governments “please don’t do that as our assets in Russia – those in which we made bad investment calls – will then be seized by the Russian state.”

Our Western leaders respond: “Don’t worry, we will bail you out of your terrible investment decisions, and let you keep your windfall profits/blood money, and instead get our stupid Western taxpayers and those stupid Western private sector creditors (pensioners) to foot the bill – thereby leaving Russian taxpayers money sat doing nothing in Western bank accounts untouched. I mean private sector creditors always end up being bailed into debt write-offs at the last minute but are then asked to be the first in to fund recovery stories – we still want them to do the heavy lifting in Ukraine reconstruction.”

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“We will get the IMF to think up a DSA to make all this seem like it adds up – Western taxpayers and private creditors paying – but don’t mention the dirty secret that we have $330 billion on account in Western banks in actual Russian money that can pay for all of this. Because after all, Russia, the aggressor, the war criminal state, waging genocide against Ukraine has to, at all costs, have its cash assets protected and eventually returned. Because Russian rights come ahead of those poor Ukrainians dying on the battlefield, the rights of Western taxpayers and Western pensioners (creditors we are asking to take a haircut on its debt).”

Burden sharing – yes, the Western taxpayer/pensioners are paying Russia’s tab in Ukraine. But Russia itself should bear no burden according to the geniuses making the decisions in the G7.

Now you would think this would be a political scandal in Western democracies. It should be but please don’t tell anyone as electorates might just figure this huge scam out.