European nations have rejected an American proposal to unfreeze portions of frozen Russian assets and transfer them to a fund supervised by the United States, according to the Financial Times.
The proposal was put forward last week during talks in Miami attended by representatives from the US, Ukraine, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the European Union and NATO, the newspaper reported, citing four sources.
President Donald Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, presented the plan, which included several methods for unfreezing the assets. One option involved moving them into a special fund overseen by Washington.
According to an American official quoted anonymously by the Financial Times, the mechanisms for releasing the funds and their intended use remain part of negotiations over a comprehensive peace settlement.
European resistance to US control
European participants at the meeting opposed both the transfer of control over the assets to the United States and the return of any portion of the funds to Russia, the Financial Times reported.
Western nations froze approximately €260 billion in Russian state assets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The bulk of these funds are held within the European Union.
Income generated from these frozen assets has already been used to finance a €45 billion loan from the G7 group of nations to Ukraine.
EU position on asset use
European Union leaders have stated that the assets themselves will be used to rebuild Ukraine if Russia does not pay war reparations. Any decision to unfreeze the funds would require unanimous agreement from all EU member states.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia will take all possible legal steps to recover its assets, according to RMF24 – fakty.
What this means for Poles in the UK
The dispute over frozen Russian assets highlights continuing transatlantic tensions over how to handle Russia and support Ukraine. For Poles in the UK, this development matters because Britain remains aligned with its European partners in opposing any premature lifting of sanctions or return of Russian funds.
The UK government’s stance – rejecting US control over the assets and any return to Moscow – suggests continued British commitment to maintaining economic pressure on Russia. This alignment with France and Germany reinforces European unity on the Ukraine question, despite American efforts to pursue separate negotiations.
Polish communities in Britain can expect the UK to continue supporting Ukraine through the existing G7 loan mechanism funded by returns on the frozen assets. Any future use of the principal sum for Ukrainian reconstruction would still require agreement across all EU states, including Poland, even though Britain is no longer an EU member but remains a key stakeholder through the G7.
The rejection of the US proposal indicates that major decisions about ending sanctions or funding Ukraine’s recovery will not be made unilaterally by Washington, which may provide more predictability for Polish expatriates following developments in Eastern Europe.
