Legally tap Russia’s frozen billions to rebuild Ukraine

Who’s going to pay to rebuild Ukraine? Aggressors have had to pay reparations before — as Germany did in the first two world wars.

But Germany lost those wars. It’s a bit harder if the aggressor doesn’t lose.

Vladimir Putin is not going to cough up hundreds of billions to rebuild Ukraine. But there is an easy way to make him do so – or at least use the prospect of having to as a bargaining tool in negotiations.

Russia blundered in leaving half its Central Bank reserves – more than $350bn – lying around in international banks, where they were frozen in a major coup for the West.

And this should be ‘tapped’ to fund ongoing humanitarian and reconstruction in Ukraine, according to a US think tank.

We should ensure ‘Russia at least is held responsible for the cost of humanitarian assistance, reparations and eventual reconstruction’, Robert Litan wrote this week on financial website Bloomberg. Mr Litan is a fellow of Brookings Institution.

Mr Litan totted up $US350bn mostly held by France (12%), Germany (10%), Japan (10%) and the US (7%). The rest is scattered ‘among many other countries’.

He said there is a basis in international law for using these reserves to pay for damages.

‘Russia has committed on a massive scale what under US law is considered an ‘intentional tort’: unprovoked violence, which requires at a minimum that the aggressor pay damages for human suffering, deaths and property losses,’ he wrote.

‘In December 2005 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution affirming a variation of intentional tort doctrine by providing a right to reparations to victims of human rights abuses under international law.’

There’s just one problem – who is going to tell Putin?