Symposium on Advancing Effective and Comprehensive Reparation for Victims of the War in Ukraine: Asset Recovery for Ukraine – The Long Road

[Natalia Kubesch is a Legal Advisor at REDRESS, focussing on asset recovery and the repurposing of assets frozen under Magnitsky Sanctions for the purpose of human rights reparations, and leading REDRESS’ universal jurisdiction work. Prior to this, Natalia practiced at two large international law firms in London, working on complex financial crime investigations and litigations, and advised on compliance with international sanction regimes. 

Lyra Nightingale is a Senior Legal Advisor at REDRESS, leading REDRESS’ Financial Accountability team. Lyra has over 12 years’ experience as a litigator, having previously practiced at a large international law firm. She has extensive experience of conducting strategic litigation in the UK Senior Courts, in particular with regards to public law and human rights and working with survivors of sexual violence. ]

From Aspiration to Realisation of the Right to Reparation 

When REDRESS launched its financial accountability project in 2020, asset recovery occupied a marginal place in human rights discourse. Discussions about the seizure and repurposing of illicit wealth seemed more at home in the worlds of anti-corruption and financial crime than in debates about accountability and reparation for international crimes.

Few anticipated how quickly that would change. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 marked a decisive turning point. Within weeks, governments across the UK, US, Canada and EU imposed sweeping sanctions on Russian individuals, companies and State entities, freezing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets. Long-suspected realities came abruptly into focus: London and other Western financial centres had served as repositories for vast quantities of wealth allegedly tied to the Russian State and political elite. 

As Ukraine’s devastation mounted, so too did calls to ensure that this frozen wealth would not remain idle. Asset recovery moved rapidly from a specialised niche to a central policy question. Could frozen Russian assets lawfully be seized and repurposed to support Ukraine’s recovery and provide reparations to victims of Russia’s aggression? The question not only engages policy choices but also legal obligations. Under international law, victims of serious human rights violations have a right to reparations owed by the responsible State. 

This piece traces the ambitions behind efforts to repurpose frozen Russian assets, the legal and political obstacles they have encountered, and the incremental workarounds now emerging. It argues that while no comprehensive legal solution yet exists to enable the large-scale confiscation and repurposing of Russian frozen assets for reparations, the debate has evolved in important ways. By relying on innovative strategies that seek to accommodate foundational principles such as sovereign immunity and property rights protections, the role asset recovery can play within accountability and reparation frameworks is gradually broadening. 

The Post-2022 Ambition: Seizing Frozen Assets to Support Ukraine 

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sanctions imposed by the G7 and allied States froze an estimated EUR 300 billion in Russian Central Bank sovereign assets, alongside at least US$58 billion in private assets linked to Russian individuals and companies. These sums represent a significant share of Ukraine’s estimated recovery needs, put at US$588 billion over the next ten years as of February 2026.

Against this backdrop, leaders in the US, Canada, the UK and the EU openly argued that asset freezes did not go far enough. Many contended that frozen assets should ultimately be confiscated and redirected to address the harm caused by Russia. Some States went further, introducing legislation designed to create novel pathways to seize frozen assets and channel their proceeds to Ukraine. 

In June 2022, Canada, for instance, amended its sanctions legislation to allow for the forfeiture of frozen assets linked to grave breaches of international security, gross and systematic human rights violations or significant corruption, with proceeds earmarked to compensate victims or support the reconstruction of affected States. Estonia followed in May 2024, introducing a law that empowers its Ministry of Foreign Affairs to confiscate assets of sanctioned persons and redirect the proceeds as “advanced compensation” for damage caused by violations of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. In the US, the REPO Act of April 2024, opened the door to confiscation of Russian sovereign assets for a dedicated Ukraine Support Fund. 

Alongside legislative proposals, attention also turned to courts. Some argued that judgments against Russia, whether from Ukrainian courts or  the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), could be enforced against Russian assets held abroad. To illustrate the scale of potential claims, by mid-2025, the ECtHR alone had reportedly registered around 9,500 individual applications, in addition to interstate cases, arising from Russia’s actions in Crimea and the Sea of Azov, and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Yet despite this activity, none of these avenues have so far delivered what many initially envisioned: the actual transfer of frozen Russian assets into recovery or reparation mechanisms for Ukraine. Canada’s experience reinforces this point. Although proceedings were initiated to seize around U.S. $26 million linked to Granite Capital Holdings Ltd and an Antonov 124 cargo airplane, several years on, no assets have been forfeited or transferred to Ukraine.

Why Confiscation Has Stalled

The gap between political ambition and tangible outcomes reflects two persistent legal obstacles.  

Private assets and the rule of law: Where frozen assets belong to private individuals or entities, permanent confiscation without a prior conviction, or judicial finding linking those assets to criminal conduct, raises serious concerns around due process and property rights.  In the UK, the Shvidler case exposed the limited degree of judicial scrutiny applied to sanctions designations. Given that seizure goes one step further, it is doubtful whether  executive decisions could, or indeed should, ever lawfully serve as a basis for permanent seizure. 

Even where a lawful basis for permanent seizure exists, confiscation is not guaranteed. In practice, stark resource imbalances between overstretched and under resourced State departments on the one hand and those with immense wealth and access to resources on the other can produce a pronounced “David and Goliath” dynamic, generating protracted and costly litigation.

Sovereign assets and immunity: For Russian State assets, sovereign immunity remains the central obstacle. While sanctions law permits States to freeze or immobilise foreign sovereign property, international law has long protected such assets from confiscation and enforcement in foreign courts.

Some scholars argue that Russia’s aggression could justify derogations from immunity, particularly through the doctrine of third-party countermeasures. But governments and courts in jurisdictions holding most Russian sovereign reserves have so far shown little appetite for testing this theory.  

Taken together, these constraints make clear that the conditions required to confiscate and repurpose frozen assets as reparation, at scale and with speed, are not yet in place. This picture is not static, however. In response to these barriers, States have begun to pursue a series of incremental and often ad hoc measures that, while stopping short of outright confiscation, are gradually expanding the space for asset recovery to contribute to reparative outcomes. 

Incremental Strategies: Repurposing Without Outright Confiscation 

In the absence of a comprehensive pathway for permanent seizure of frozen assets, States have turned to indirect approaches that rely on limited forms of asset recovery. 

One strand of this emerging practice relies on domestic frameworks permitting confiscation where assets constitute the proceeds of crime. Rather than seizing assets solely by virtue of sanctions designations, governments have targeted frozen assets traceable to unlawful conduct, especially sanctions evasion – for example, assets moved or concealed in anticipation of imminent sanctions. This approach rests on firmer legal ground and has been upheld by the ECtHR as compatible with property and fair trial rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.  

The US has moved furthest along this path. Under the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act, the US Attorney General may transfer proceeds from private assets seized from sanctioned Russian oligarchs, or used in sanctions violations, to the Secretary of State for use in Ukraine. This authority was exercised in May 2023, when Attorney General Garland approved the transfer of US$5.4 million seized from accounts linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev to support war veterans in Ukraine, marking the first instance of frozen Russian assets being channelled to victims of the conflict.

The UK has taken smaller steps. In July 2024, the National Crime Agency recovered £783,827 under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, believed to have been held for the benefit of Petr Aven, bringing to close an investigation into alleged sanctions breaches. While the recovery itself is notable, the redirection of these funds remains dependent on political will and cross-departmental collaboration. Nearly two years on, the funds have yet to be diverted to Ukraine, highlighting  the absence of a clear mechanism under English law to allocate recovered assets for reparative purposes. 

At the EU level, Directive (EU) 2024/1260 on Asset Recovery and Confiscation points towards a potential model. Article 19 encourages Member States to allow assets confiscated following a judicial process, including those linked to sanctions evasion, to be used for public interest purposes. A newly introduced sub-paragraph, absent from the 2014 predecessor directive,  identifies contributing to mechanisms to support third countries affected by wars of aggression as one of such purposes – a clear reference to the emerging international reparations architecture for Ukraine, including the Register of Damage and the expected Claims Commission. 

By introducing this provision, the Directive aligns confiscation more closely with victims’ rights to reparation, recognising that sanctions violations may generate harm with a sufficient nexus to justify the use of recovered assets for reparation, even where that harm falls outside the strict parameters of the underlying offence. In doing so, it addresses arguments the authors have encountered in their engagement with stakeholders, who resist repurposing sanctions violation proceeds to support Ukraine on the grounds of insufficient causal connection.

Windfall Profits and Sovereign Reserves

With respect to Russian sovereign assets, policymakers have pursued a different path: targeting the income generated while those assets remain frozen. This approach has been developed most fully at the EU level in relation to Russian central bank reserves immobilised at Euroclear, the Belgium-based central securities depository holding a significant share of Russia’s foreign exchanges. Since 2022, the reinvestment of these assets, combined with high interest rates, has generated substantial windfall profits, which the EU has sought to mobilise to support Ukraine. 

Some critics, including the Central Bank of Russia, have challenged whether separating principal from profits can be sustained under international law, characterising it as an indirect circumvention of sovereign immunity. The EU has responded by arguing that the profits do not legally belong to Russia under the relevant deposit contracts. To meet Ukraine’s urgent financing needs, EU Member States agreed to front-load support through a loan, initially financed by Member States and subsequently repaid from future windfall profits. 

In December 2025, the European Commission went further, proposing an EU Reparations Loan backed by cash balances associated with Russian foreign exchange reserves held within EU financial institutions. Unlike earlier schemes, this proposal would have effectively leveraged sovereign assets themselves as collateral, with repayment contingent on Russia providing war  reparations to Ukraine. The initiative ultimately stalled, largely due to concerns by Belgium over the allocation of litigation risk, given its exposure as host state of Euroclear. Instead, 24 Member States agreed to finance the Ukraine Support Loan through jointly issued EU debt. 

Notably, the Ukraine Support Loan framework allows Ukraine to use budgetary support to finance compensation for individual victims. This inclusion followed sustained advocacy by survivor groups and civil society during the negotiations for the EU Reparations Loan, who argued that allocating even a modest share of any loan backed by Russian asset – as little as 2% – towards reparations could have a transformative impact. 

This marks an important precedent: the explicit integration of victim compensation within an EU-led financing structure for Ukraine. However, it remains unclear whether participating States will ultimately agree to allocate a share of funding specifically for victim reparation, and, if so, at what percentage. 

Conclusion

Incremental legal and policy efforts to leverage frozen Russian assets for use in Ukraine remain plainly insufficient when measured against the scale and harm suffered in Ukraine. They also reveal a persistent disconnect: while military and economic support dominate policy debates, demands for survivor-centred reparation struggle for visibility and commitment. 

Yet survivors themselves emphasise why this matters: channelling assets linked to the Russian State or Russian individuals  towards reparation is not only about resources. For many, it is also a way of “making Russia pay” for the harm inflicted and re-centring victims’ voices within accountability processes.

Fragmented, incomplete and ad hoc though they are, ongoing efforts to access even limited portions of frozen Russian wealth to support Ukraine mark a meaningful shift. Through utilising proceeds-of-crime regimes or windfall profits , States are beginning to rethink how asset recovery, accountability and reparations intersect while still giving due regard to the rule of law. These early precedents are already shaping advocacy beyond Ukraine, including in contexts such as Myanmar and Syria.

The optimism of 2022 underestimated the legal and political resistance involved in recovering frozen assets for reparations. But progress has nevertheless been made. The challenge is now whether States will build on these steps or allow momentum to stall just as credible pathways for supporting victims from frozen assets are beginning to emerge.

Photo attribution: by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash