The funding was confirmed after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said he expected “important decisions” from the summit in Italy, with leaders from the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan seeking to shore up support for Kyiv as several of them face elections or political turmoil at home.
Under the agreement, G7 members will provide the funds using profits earned from Russia’s frozen central bank assets, most of them held in the European Union, as collateral. The finer details of how much of the money will be provided by the nations involved is still to be finalised, but leaders said it showed unity in the face of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s a very strong message to Putin that Putin cannot outlast us, and we will stand by Ukraine as long as it takes,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said. “It is not European taxpayers that are paying for the Russian damage [in Ukraine] but it is Russia,” she added.
The process involves using the profits, essentially the dividends and maturities, of Russia’s roughly $300bn assets abroad, frozen after Moscow launched its invasion in 2022. Kyiv has been calling for these frozen assets for years but the move is a major boost to Ukraine as it battles through a difficult 2024 against a better-armed Russia.
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