Want To See Members Of The Putin Wing Of The GOP Short Circuit?
Some in the Biden administration knew it was going to come to this all along. Trump-Putin allies in Congress have no intention of allowing an agreement on immigration/Ukraine… ever. And that very much appears to include MAGA Mike. The backup plan for Ukraine has been to transfer $300 billion in frozen Russian assets to the war effort, circumventing congressional traitors like JD Vance and Tommy Tuberville in the Senate and Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Traitor Greene (and MAGA Mike) in the House.
On Thursday David Sanger and Alan Rappeport reported that Janet Yellen’s concerns— legality and worries that other nations would hesitate to keep their funds at the New York Federal Reserve, or in dollars, if the United States established a precedent for seizing the money— are being overcome. Support for the move is building in Congress and discussions are ongoing with Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan, which have all frozen— but not seized— Russian assets. “Seizing the assets,” wrote Sanger and Rappeport, “would take matters a significant step further and require careful legal consideration.”
Biden has not yet signed off on the strategy, and many of the details remain under heated discussion. Policymakers must determine if the money will be channeled directly to Ukraine or used to its benefit in other ways.
They are also discussing what kinds of guardrails might be associated with the funds, such as whether the money could be used only for reconstruction and budgetary purposes to support Ukraine’s economy, or whether— like the funds Congress is debating— it could be spent directly on the military effort.
The discussions have taken on greater urgency since Congress failed to reach a deal to provide military aid before the end of the year. On Tuesday, lawmakers abandoned a last-ditch effort amid a stalemate over Republican demands that any aid be tied to a crackdown on migration across the U.S. border with Mexico.
…Seizing such a large sum of money from another sovereign nation would be without precedent, and such an action could have unpredictable legal ramifications and economic consequences. It would almost certainly lead to lawsuits and retaliation from Russia.
… In a sign that some European countries are ready to move forward with confiscating Russian assets, German prosecutors this week seized about $790 million from the Frankfurt bank account of a Russian financial firm that was under E.U. sanctions.
The Biden administration has said little in public about the negotiations. At the State Department on Tuesday, Matthew Miller, a spokesman, said: “It’s something that we have looked at. There remains sort of operational questions about that, and legal questions.” He said he did not have more information.
Very little of the Russian assets, perhaps $5 billion or so by some estimates, are in the hands of U.S. institutions. But a significant chunk of Russia’s foreign reserves are held in U.S. dollars, both in the United States and in Europe. The United States has the power to police transactions involving its currency and use its sanctions to immobilize dollar-denominated assets.
The bulk of the Russian deposits are believed to be in Europe, including in Switzerland and Belgium, which are not part of the Group of 7. As a result, diplomatic negotiations are underway over how to gain access to those funds, some of which are held in euros and other currencies.
American officials were surprised that President Vladimir Putin did not repatriate the funds before the Ukraine invasion. But in interviews over the past year, they have speculated that Putin did not believe the funds would be seized, because they were left untouched after his invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014. And bringing the funds home to Russia would have been another tipoff that an invasion was imminent, at a time Mr. Putin was vigorously denying American and British charges that he was preparing for military action.
One Group of 7 official said the coalition had been considering a variety of options for how to use Russia’s assets, with the goal of putting forward a unified proposal around the second anniversary of the war, when many top officials will be gathering in Germany for the Munich Security Conference. The first debates have focused on what would be permissible under international law and under each nation’s domestic laws, as they consider Russia’s likely legal responses and retaliatory measures.
Earlier in the year, American officials said they thought the frozen assets could be used as leverage to help force Russia to the negotiating table for a cease-fire; presumably, in return, Moscow would be given access to some of its assets. But Russia has shown no interest in such negotiations, and now officials argue that beginning to use the funds may push Moscow to move to the negotiating table.
Among the options that Western countries have discussed are seizing the assets directly and transferring them to Ukraine, using interest earned and other profits from the assets that are held in European financial institutions to Ukraine’s benefit or using the assets as collateral for loans to Ukraine.
Daleep Singh, a former top Biden administration official, suggested in an interview this year that the immobilized reserves should be placed into an escrow account that Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance could have access to and be used as collateral for new bonds that Ukraine would issue.
If Ukraine can successfully repay the debt— over a period of 10 to 30 years— then Russia could potentially have its frozen assets back.
“If they can’t repay, my hunch is that Russia probably has something to do with that,” said Singh, who is now the chief global economist at PGIM Fixed Income. “And so in that way, Russia has a stake in Ukraine’s emergence as a sovereign independent economy and country.”
It is important to not get Israel involved in any of these negotiations. Right now the most extreme parts of the settlers’ movement claims Israel should extend from the Euphrates River (Iraq) through Syria and Jordan— not to mention the West Bank— and down as far as the Nile in Egypt. Some “scholars”/crackpots claim that when the ancient Jews were deported and brought to Assyria, there were 10 tribes that were “lost,” Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Ephraim, and Manasseh. Historically, there have been many theories about what happened to them including one involving the Khazars, who lived in a vast region from modern-day Ukraine, southern Russia and Kazakhstan.
After the collapse of Byzantine control of the Crimea, the Khazar Khaganate held sway until the Kievan Rus became the dominant power there (10th and 11th centuries). One group after another claimed Crimea, including the Mongols, but in the late 15th century it became part of the Ottoman Empire. The Russian Empire annexed it in 1783 after the Russo-Turkish War (think Frances Nightingale) and it remained part of Russia until Khrushchev transferred it to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954 as a symbolic gesture, to celebrate the close historical and cultural ties between Russians and Ukrainians within the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991), Ukraine became an independent country and in 1997 Russia and Ukraine recognized each other’s borders. Russia annexed it in 2014 and the international community did an appeasement move… and here we are, with Russia trying the gobble up the rest of Ukraine.
China might not react agreeably if that precedent was set. Unless they are certain that trump will become fuhrer in a year. I bet they could easily make american dumber than shits do that.