The European Union should hand Ukraine profits from Russia's frozen central bank assets to help the beleaguered country buy ammunition and rebuild after the devastating two-year-old war, Italy's foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday.
"I believe it is right to use the profits from the Russian Central Bank assets for Ukraine," Tajani said on the sidelines of a Brussels summit.
"We asked (EU foreign policy chief) Josep Borrell to present a proposal that is legally watertight and I believe we have a legal basis," Tajani went on.
Tajani said he believed the profits - worth several billion euros - should be used to "support the purchase of ammunition and for reconstruction"
"The important thing is that they are used in favour of Ukraine," Tajani underlined.
The European Commission unveiled plan on Wednesday detailing how profits from the frozen Russian central bank assets could be used to help Ukraine amid recent Russian battlefield gains and a shortage of ammunition. The EU pledged a million rounds of ammunition for Ukraine last year but has so far only made half this amount available.
The EU plan involves giving Ukraine an undisclosed portion of the three billion euros in annual interest earnings generated from Russian state bank assets held at the Belgian financial services provider Euroclear (nearly 200 billion euros).
Euroclear will retain a portion of the earnings from the Russian assets as collateral to meet obligations to other investors and potential legal proceedings. Meanwhile, Belgium has said it will transfer the 25 percent of capital taxes due on the Russian profits to Ukraine.
EU member states have agreed to allocate the profits from Russian investments into a special budget known as the European Peace Facility. Money from this budget will fund arms deliveries to Ukraine, with five billion euros already contributed by EU member states.
On Tuesday the EU executive announced the disbursement of the first 4.5 billion euro instalment from the EU's new 50 billion euro financing mechanism for Ukraine, aimed at supporting the war-torn nation's budget until the end of 2027.
