Le Figaro reports:
War in Ukraine: Europe’s Financial Support Is Under Pressure
The war in Ukraine costs €165 million per day, according to the German Marshall Fund. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on September 25 that most of this money was earmarked to finance drone or missile purchases. “A third of this funding is for drones for January, February and March 2027,” he said. “And if we do not order and pay for them in October and November, we will face serious challenges.” The European Union is currently conducting an audit of Ukraine’s public accounts to try to gain a clearer picture. Such transparency is all the more necessary as the government and individuals close to Zelensky have been implicated in several corruption scandals in recent months.
So what's the way out?
Stealing.
This situation is leading some to set their sights on a considerable windfall that has remained untouched: the approximately €200 billion in frozen Russian assets in Europe.
Interest generated by these assets is already being appropriated by the EU.
But seizing the assets themselves, as a 'windfall', is unprecedented according to this 2024 academic paper:
Seizing central bank assets?
We study the global macroeconomic and financial impacts of sanctions on central bank assets. We build a new database on freezes and seizures of central bank assets spanning 1914–2024, which we compare with discussions on today’s Russia. We show that the scale of the freeze on the Central Bank of Russia’s assets is rarely seen in history and that non-belligerent countries have never seized central bank assets to finance reconstruction in a third country in an ongoing war—unlike what is being discussed by scholars for today’s Russia.