Billions of pounds in Russian assets – including £2.5 billion generated from the sale of Chelsea Football Club – should be used to support Ukraine, ministers have been urged.
At the weekend, Rachel Reeves announced that she would use the profits of frozen Russian assets to fund a £2.26 billion loan scheme to help Kyiv fund its reconstruction and buy weapons.
But the Government is facing calls to go further and use the assets themselves.
Conservative former cabinet minister Sir John Whittingdale said ministers should ‘start thinking’ about whether they can use the frozen assets.
‘The announcement that we are going to use the interest on the frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine is quite a big step forward,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour on Sunday night.
‘I actually think we need to start thinking about whether we can’t use those assets themselves. Now that’s a very controversial issue…
‘But there are countries now saying that there is a huge amount of Russian money which is unlikely to ever go back to Russia and maybe we should start looking at that.’
Meanwhile, a legal adviser said that the £2.5 billion generated from the sale of Chelsea FC is ‘still locked up’ three years on despite it being committed to humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves signing loan guarantees for Ukraine alongside Sir Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelensky
Roman Abramovich announced the sale of Chelsea in March 2022. Now ministers are being urged to use Russian assets, including the £2.5billion generated from the sale of the football club, to support Ukraine
Tory former cabinet minister Sir John Whittingdale (pictured) said ministers should ‘start thinking’ about whether they can use the frozen assets
Roman Abramovich announced the sale of Chelsea in March 2022 amid calls for him to be sanctioned following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions came days later and the sale was completed in May later that year and Mr Abramovich pledged to divert all proceeds to a foundation to benefit victims of the war.
But Lyra Nightingale, a legal adviser at Redress, an organisation helping deliver justice and reparations for survivors of torture and challenging impunity for perpetrators, said the funds remained unused and there had been ‘no clear reason from the Government as to why that is so’.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Around three years ago now, Abramovich… was being subject to these Russian sanctions… and he was granted a licence to sell Chelsea Football Club.
‘The proceeds of that were to go for the benefit of Ukraine. (But) three years later we’re still waiting.
‘And there is no clear reason from the Government as to why that is so. (It’s) still locked up. That money has been expressly committed to humanitarian purposes in Ukraine.
‘We don’t know why it’s stuck. There’s a real lack of transparency and over three years of campaigning for that money to go where the Government said it would go, that has still not happened.’
Mr Abramovich (right) with Vladimir Putin during a meeting in Moscow in May 2005
Firefighters working to extinguish a fire at a residential building in Kharkiv, Ukraine following a Russian drone attack on March 2
Asked whether Sir Keir supported calls to confiscate Russian assets, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said yesterday: ‘We are currently focused on the agreement that the G7 have reached in terms of using seized Russian assets to pay for support to Ukraine.
‘There was a 50 billion US dollar agreement at the G7, there was the agreement or loan that the Chancellor signed over the weekend from the UK – £2.26billion loan to bolster Ukrainian military capabilities, to be paid back using sanctioned Russian sovereign assets.
‘That agreement is taking effect and that’s what we’re focused on at the moment. We’re never going to take any options off the table to further support Ukraine, but that’s where the current focus is.’
