Plan to fund Ukraine war with Russian assets down to ‘technicalities,’ Canadian lawmaker says

Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says she’s confident the global plan to help bankroll Ukraine’s war effort using Russian assets is moving ahead.

“I’m very confident Ukraine will start getting the money in the coming months,” Freeland said in an interview on POLITICO’s “Power Play” podcast, speaking with host Anne McElvoy. “At this point what we’re talking about is the technicalities.”

After Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022, nations around the world froze some $280 billion in Russian sovereign assets under sanctions. Freeland was a key figure behind persuading allies to take that step.

Western nations disagreed for years over whether to seize assets outright, fearing unintended global consequences from an unprecedented move.

G7 countries, including Canada, the U.S. and Japan, finally agreed on a plan this summer to use profits from those frozen assets to loan Ukraine $50 billion to fund its war effort. Freeland was also a driving force behind that move, leveraging relationships with key global players including U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to make it happen.

For Freeland, the fight is personal. Her family tree traces back to Ukraine, where she worked as a journalist during the fall of the Soviet Union, and she has made it a mission to rally support on the international stage for the war-torn nation in its defense against Russia.

Canada has been one of Ukraine’s most vocal defenders and has in some ways punched above its weight in the fight, ponying up C$5 billion to that global pot from Russian assets and seizing a Russian Antonov-124 cargo plane parked on a Toronto tarmac.

But in other areas, it’s come up short. Canada’s international reputation has been dented by a lapsed NATO defense-spending commitment and a promised but yet-to-be-delivered air-defense system for Ukraine that’s become mired in red tape.

Freeland argues that Canada has been at the front of the pack when military and financial support are measured on a per capita basis.

She also told “Power Play” that she was one of the few people in a G7 government who was not surprised Kyiv did not fall during the first week of the war.

“It was a truth universally acknowledged in February of 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, that Kyiv wouldn’t stand. Maybe a week, maybe two weeks — three at the outside,” she said.

“Really smart military people, really smart analysts, were all absolutely certain that would be the case, and I wasn’t. I really believed that the Ukrainian people had the determination and the social cohesion to resist and to resist successfully,” she said. “And that’s what we’ve seen them doing.”

Freeland also said she has been surprised by the steadfastness of the West and its allies. “The support has been deeper and longer than I had feared at the outset,” she said.

“At the end of the day, Ukrainians are not asking British people, they’re not asking Canadians, to fight there and die,” she told Power Play. “They’re doing that themselves … and they are making the world safer.”