On February 20, 2024, the Belgian House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations held a hearing on the resolution on the confiscation of Russian assets in Belgium for the recovery of Ukraine. This resolution calls on the Belgian government and the international community to take practical steps to use frozen Russian assets to compensate Ukraine.

Ivan Horodyskyy, director of the Dnistrianskyi Center, took part in these hearings. The text of the speech is published below.

On the eve of another year since the beginning of Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine, it is challenging not only to predict when the war will end, but also the final amount of reparations that Russia will be billed. The inflicted damages have already amounted to hundreds of billions of the US dollars and continue to grow with each new destruction and new victim. 

Financing compensation for these losses is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the reparations process. The consent of the Russian Federation to voluntary compensation obviously is a politically desirable, but almost unbelievable scenario. Acknowledgment of guilt, including in terms of compensation for damages on the part of Russia, is unlikely for any political modality of peace settlement.

From this perspective, Russian assets frozen abroad appear to be the only real source of compensation.

In the declarations and statements of the European Union, the G7 and other stakeholders, the same formula is repeated: "Russia’s sovereign assets will remain immobilized until Russia pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine". This provision is important, but imperfect, because it does not provide for an alternative scenario - when Russia irrevocably refuses to compensate for damages.

The situation when Ukrainians remain without compensation for damages inflicted by aggression for decades, and at the same time assets remain immobilized is unjustified from a moral point of view. And it will become increasingly difficult to find legal arguments to support such a status quo.

Since the spring of 2022 as a representative of civil society - the Dnistrianskyi Center and the Ukrainian Bar Association, I and my colleagues have been promoting the idea that the process of confiscating Russian assets will be long, complicated, and difficult. However, this does not mean that confiscation is a one-step process that must happen at a certain moment.

Discussions about a possible solution, its content and enforcement mechanisms should be held already, to be implemented at the necessary moment. On the other hand, this work will increase the pressure on the Russian Federation and demonstrate the firmness of the allies to punish aggression.

The Belgian initiative we are discussing today is very important, as it marks a practical step towards justice for Ukraine in terms of reparations. It is especially important that it comes from Belgium - the state that manages the largest number of frozen Russian assets and the EU presiding state in this six months - probably the most difficult months of the war since February 24, 2022.

This Resolution is not yet a decision, but is already a search for a solution. And this search can make additional pressure on Russia to recognize its obligation to pay reparations, which is primary goal of the global community.

The Resolution calls for coordinated action and the development of appropriate plans, both for the integrity of the frozen assets and for the profits from them. As I said above, confiscation should not be considered as a one-time process, and the use of profits from assets, or their taxation, are important, albeit intermediate, steps on this path.

At the same time, despite the high positive assessment of the Resolution, it seems that some of its proposals should be coordinated with the existing proposals for the creation of an international compensation mechanism for Ukraine. Under the auspices of the Council of Europe, the Register of Damages has already been established, and the Compensation Commission and the Fund are about to be created.

It is obvious that the legitimacy of the process requires its recognition at the universal level, which the Resolution proposes to ensure by involving the UN or the IMF. But the Council of Europe is an authoritative international organization that has proven its commitment to the values of a "rules-based society." And the mechanism used, namely Enlarged Partial Agreement , allows the involvement of non-CoE participants, which in the future may bring the number of participating states to more than half of the UN members.

At the same time, in Ukraine we understand all the concerns faced by controllers of Russian assets. The confiscation of these assets and the aftershocks it can cause constitute a global problem.

However, while expressing concerns about the global economy, it is worth asking yourself: will the confiscation cause more damage to the world economy than that already inflicted by Russian aggression? According to estimates by the Kiel Institute, by 2026, the GDP losses of third countries alone will amount to $250 billion, and the total damage to the world economy will probably be much higher.

Potential aggressions in the Middle East, East Asia and South America could have an even more devastating effect. By preventing one negative consequence, indecisiveness and inconsistency in decision-making, we get the risk of many others, disproportionate in quantitative terms.

So the signal that Belgium can send through the adoption of this Resolution is globally important. The willingness to use and even, in the future, to confiscate frozen Russian assets can be a powerful signal for other potential conflicts and a step towards preventing them.

International law has answers as to what the instruments of such use and confiscation of Russian assets for compensation to Ukraine might be. The doctrine of countermeasures envisaged by the UN Charter is recognized as an effective legal mechanism for the confiscation of assets both at the doctrinal level (in the report of a group of international lawyers headed by Dapo Akande and Philippe Sands), and at the practical level. In particular, the logic of the U.S. REPO Bill on the confiscation of Russian assets is based on it.

That is why it should be recognized that we are approaching the moment when political decisions are necessary to start the process of using with Russian assets to compensate for Ukraine and Ukrainians. These decisions cannot be postponed until the end of the war - on the contrary, they can bring it closer. And Belgium's leadership in this process needs to be highly assessed.

Finally, in these difficult and symbolic days for Ukraine, I want to say that it will be hard for Ukrainians to talk about "victory" at any end of the war. Hundreds of billions of US dollars in damages, millions of emigrants - primarily women, children and young people, hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded may turn out to be too high a price for this loud word. However, this gives Ukrainians the right to demand and hope for justice.

Confiscation of Russian assets is one of many elements of justice for Ukraine. And, at the same time, moving in another right direction - preventing even greater threats to world security and economy.