Swiss Parliament allows transfer of frozen Russian assets to Ukraine
8 March 2024 13:08
The upper house of the Swiss parliament on Thursday, 7 March, approved a resolution to use frozen Russian assets to finance war reparations in Ukraine. This was reported by Kommersant Ukrainian, citing Barron’s 
The Lower House approved the permit last year. Thus, these decisions “pave the way for the government to work on an international legal basis to use the frozen assets of the aggressor state to pay reparations in the attacked countries.”
“The facts are very clear indeed. Russia has seriously violated international law. Therefore, it must compensate for the damage caused. International discussions are underway on compensation mechanisms, and Switzerland is contributing with its knowledge, skills and history in this area,”
– said Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis.
Switzerland will now seek to create the international legal framework necessary to develop a global compensation mechanism, the newspaper said.
In May last year, the Swiss Ministry of Economy announced that CHF 7.4 billion (USD 8.44 billion) of the Russian central bank’s reserves and assets were held in Swiss accounts. In addition, Switzerland has frozen another 7.5 billion francs in the accounts of sanctioned individuals and organisations. However, it is known that private Russian clients held more than 150 billion francs in Swiss banks as of March 2022. Ukraine should obviously not count on these funds under any circumstances.
According to Swiss data, after the full-scale Russian invasion, Switzerland supported Ukraine with approximately three billion Swiss francs ($3.4 billion). Switzerland is going to spend another 1.5 billion francs on Ukraine in the period from 2025 to 2028.
Switzerland has not only refused to sell weapons to Ukraine, but has also banned third countries from selling weapons made or purchased in Switzerland.
