CBO flags plan to take $2.5B in Russian funds for Kyiv
Shafaq News – Washington
The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Saturday that Washington could seize about $2.5 billion of roughly $5 billion in frozen Russian sovereign assets held under US jurisdiction if Congress enacts the Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act of 2025.
The confiscations would take place between 2026 and 2028.
The CBO based its estimate on an assumed total of $5 billion in Russian state assets controlled by the United States under the proposed law, which would spell out how frozen Russian funds are repurposed for Ukraine. Assigning a 50% probability that the federal government goes ahead with such a move, the office projects that around half of those assets could ultimately be seized in favor of Kyiv.
Despite this, the report noted significant uncertainty over whether Trump would actually approve such a step. If the White House opted to proceed, about $300 million of the confiscated sum would first be parked briefly in US Treasury securities before being spent on economic and humanitarian support for Ukraine. The CBO added that any interest earned on those holdings would also be directed to Ukraine without additional appropriations, starting from the year after the assets are seized, and estimates that passing the bill would raise direct federal spending by $10 million between 2026 and 2035.
The debate in Washington comes as Western governments continue to weigh how far they can go in using frozen Russian reserves. Since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the European Union and the Group of Seven (G7) have immobilized around $300–335 billion in Russian central bank assets — roughly half of Russia’s pre-war foreign currency reserves — with the largest share held in Europe and managed through Belgium-based Euroclear.
Belgium, which hosts most of those funds, has come under growing pressure from the European Commission to support a plan that would leverage the assets for Ukraine. Media reports in early November said the Commission failed to win Belgian backing to tap the principal of the frozen reserves and is now seeking approval for a €140 billion “reparations loan” arrangement for Ukraine that would be backed by the Russian assets without formally seizing them.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has repeatedly condemned the freezing and potential confiscation of its assets in Europe as “theft”, insisting that the measures target not only private holdings but also Russian state property.
