307. Olena Halushka - Liquidating $300bn in Frozen Russian Assets could Provide Crucial Funds for Ukraine

Liquidating $300bn in frozen Russian assets, could provide more funds for Ukraine. Western allies are running short of cash, but they could help release billions and hurt Putin’s war effort at the same time. Confiscation would also be a lawful act of self-defence. Article 51 of the UN charter recognises the right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a UN member. Russia’s aggression has an obvious economic impact on Ukraine via attacks on such things as energy, exports, civil infrastructure and economic facilities. In 2022, Ukraine’s GDP decreased by 29.1%. In order to continue defending itself, Ukraine should be able to access frozen Russian assets to correct this imbalance caused by the Russian invasion. Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/dec/11/ukraine-russia-300bn-frozen-assets-west-cash-putin-war ---------- ABOUT: Olena Halushka is a is a board member of the Ukrainian NGO “Anti-corruption Action Centre”, and co-founder of the International Centre for Ukrainian Victory. She has also worked as a chief of international advocacy at the post-Maidan coalition of 80 CSOs “Reanimation Package of Reforms”. Olena is a contributor to the Atlantic Council, Kyiv Independent. She has also written op-eds for the Washington Post, the Foreign Policy, and the EU Observer – but it’s a major article she wrote for the UK’s Guardian newspaper that we’ll be discussing today. ---------- LINKS: https://twitter.com/OlenaHalushka https://twitter.com/AntAC_ua https://twitter.com/ICUVua https://www.linkedin.com/in/olena-halushka-b7342259/?originalSubdomain=ua https://ukrainianvictory.org/experts/olena-halushka/ https://www.fpri.org/contributor/olena-halushka/ https://cepa.org/author/olena-halushka/ https://archive.kyivpost.com/author/olena-halushka https://foreignpolicy.com/author/olena-halushka/ ---------- SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain ---------- TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND: Superhumans - Hospital for war traumas https://superhumans.com/en/ UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukraine https://unbroken.org.ua/ Come Back Alive https://savelife.in.ua/en/ Chefs For Ukraine - World Central Kitchen https://wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraine UNITED24 - An initiative of President Zelenskyy https://u24.gov.ua/ Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation https://prytulafoundation.org ---------- PLATFORMS: Twitter: https://twitter.com/CurtainSilicon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconcurtain/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4thRZj6NO7y93zG11JMtqm Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finkjonathan/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain ---------- Welcome to the Silicon Curtain podcast. Please like and subscribe if you like the content we produce. It will really help to increase the popularity of our content in YouTube’s algorithm. Our material is now being made available on popular podcasting platforms as well, such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts.