Why Ukraine should not really count on frozen Russian assets

I know there is a lot of speculation about what we expect to rebuild with that money, but that money is not a given.

I would very much like to support my colleagues who say how great it would be to use this money, but at the moment there is no desire in the EU countries to touch the frozen funds of the Russian Federation. The problem is both in the legal regime of the European Union itself and in those assets of the EU. Europeans also want no one to touch their property in Russia.

Therefore, of course, you can hope that something will change for the better, but for now we have to rely on ourselves.

First, we don't know when the war will end.

Secondly, we cannot predict the readiness or lack of readiness in the EU countries to change their attitude towards the legal regime of those assets.

And thirdly, indeed, Trump is the factor that confuses everyone right now. And the European Union is not just frightened by Trump's statements. It has already begun to take steps to build up its military capabilities and invest more money in the defense industry and its defense capabilities.

Of course, this happens very slowly. The level of their training is still quite low, and their internal pacifism is high. They still think that all this will not affect them.

Just look at the farmers' protests. They concern not so much exports from Ukraine. Rather, they were an explosion of internal problems that had been building up for years and related to subsidies, green tariff regulation, pesticide bans and other measures that were introduced by the European Union and are now starting to take effect.

And the European Union has to solve these issues "on the go", in the middle of a war on the continent, which, of course, is not very easy, given the number of countries in the European Union and the very complex decision-making procedure, the various competences of the bodies.

Well, the approach of elections to the European Parliament also does not help our cause now.