Why Confiscated Russian Assets Must Pay For Ukraine's Reconstruction

An interview with Vladimir Milov, Russian opposition politician.

The Mega-yacht Scheherazade, linked to Putin. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Western countries have seized hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian assets following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. Since then, the question of what to do with those assets has loomed large over debates about Ukraine.

My interview guest Vladimir Milov is a former Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation and now a Russian opposition politician. He was an associate of the late Alexei Navalny. When we spoke last week he made a compelling case for the expropriation of Russian assets as a means to aid Ukraine's reconstruction efforts. Milov explains how a web of state-affiliated oligarchs help shield Russian assets from seizure and what must be done to track down those assets. He discusses some of the political and economic risks of confiscating Russian assets for Ukraine’s reconconstruciton, but forcefully argues that the benefits far outweigh these risks.

This interview helps to…