The Government of Ukraine wants to receive the Russian assets seized by the West to rebuild the country

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal on Thursday expressed his willingness that Ukraine can receive part of the Russian assets seized by Western powers to facilitate the process of rebuilding the country.

Shmigal reported that the authorities are promoting the Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine and that, within this framework, “active work” is already being done, according to the Ukrinform agency.

The head of Government acknowledged that there is no single procedure for executing this transfer of Russian assets, so work will be done individually with each country.

“We want to receive some of these funds in the next six months to quickly begin rebuilding our country,” said Shmigal, who has also urged the international community to continue the seizure of assets.

However, he urged the European Union (EU) to extend its sanctions because “they are not enough”, and has called for an embargo on Russian oil to be passed.

On Thursday, the Swiss authorities have detailed that, to date, it has frozen Russian assets and funds worth more than 7.5 billion Swiss francs, some 7.3 billion euros.

On Wednesday, Dutch customs authorities have held a total of 14 Russian-owned luxury yachts in Dutch shipyards and kept them under strict surveillance in implementation of the export ban, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra announced Wednesday.

In turn, the European Union today gave the green light to its fifth package of sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, which for the first time affects the energy sector with a ban on imports of Russian coal and also includes an arms embargo on Russia and the veto of high-tech exports to that country.

The new measures also include more sanctions against “oligarchs, Russian propaganda actors, members of the security and military apparatus and entities of the industrial and technological sector linked to the Russian aggression against Ukraine,” the current French presidency of the EU Council said on Twitter, noting that this “package so substantial extends sanctions against Russia to new areas”.

The measures were proposed on Wednesday by the European Commission and adopted today by the ambassadors of the Member States to the EU after two days discussing their technical details and will now have to be approved by written procedure to be published tomorrow, Friday, in the Official Journal of the Union, after which they will enter into force.

The fifth round of sanctions against Russia comes in response to recent images of civilians executed in Bucha, a municipality on the outskirts of Kiev occupied for weeks by Russian troops in which the EU believes war crimes have been committed.

(With information from EuropaPress and EFE)

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