Working Group Paper #15 Why and How the West Should Seize Russia’s

Our view is that the West should seize the Russian sovereign assets in the West as soon as possible and put them to use for Ukraine’s reconstruction and to compensate the victims of the war. [...] The REPO Act would authorize the President to confiscate Russian state assets, and the rest of the procedure would be the same as above. [...] According to the latest reading, the end of the first quarter of 2023, among identified reserves the share of the US dollar was 59 percent and the euro 20 percent. [...] In the 19th Century, the British pound was the dominant global reserve currency, but the United Kingdom intentionally abandoned this position after World War I to the United States to end the overvaluation of the pound, which had rendered much of British industry uncompetitive. [...] In short, there is no valid economic reason to fear that the Western utilization of the reserves of the Central Bank of Russia will undermine the status of the US dollar or the euro as long as the US and the EU act together as they have done in the G7 in defense of Ukraine.