The G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ May 23-25 meeting in Stresa, Italy is congratulating itself throughout the media of the West on having effectively agreed to securitize the interest-income streams from frozen Russian foreign exchange assets, into a $50 billion bond issue for military aid to Ukraine. However, RT in its article on May 26 inconveniently quoted Italy’s Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti that the asset grab “still presents significant technical and legal problems” and thus is not “finalized.”
And this is what the G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ Communiqué actually stated in Paragraph 8, on that subject:
“8. We welcome the EU decision to direct extraordinary profits stemming from immobilized Russian sovereign assets for the benefit of Ukraine. Following up on the G7 Leaders’ Statement of 24 February 2024, we are making progress in our discussions on 3 potential avenues to bring forward the extraordinary profits stemming from immobilized Russian sovereign assets to the benefit of Ukraine, consistent with international law and our respective legal systems, with a view to presenting options to provide additional financial support to Ukraine to our Leaders ahead of the Apulia Summit in June. We reaffirm that, consistent with our respective legal systems, Russia’s sovereign assets in our jurisdictions will remain immobilized until Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine.”
