At the recent gathering of G20 finance ministers in Brazil, delegates were gripped by a deep sense of unease over a pressing issue: the potential seizure or use of Russian assets frozen under the western sanctions that followed its invasion of Ukraine.
Two ministers — Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed al-Jadaan and Indonesia’s Sri Mulyani Indrawati — were among those particularly alarmed by the idea. Were G7 countries seriously preparing to do this? And had they considered the full implications of such a drastic step?
Their questions to their western counterparts cut to the heart of a fraught debate over whether hundreds of billions of euros in frozen Russian central bank assets should be mobilised to help fund Ukraine as the conflict there drags into a third year.