With Ukraine plunged into darkness, the EU searches for justice
By Euronews Brussels bureau
Ukraine has been plunged into darkness.
Russia has marked the nine-month anniversary of the war with a new barrage of brutal attacks against Ukraine’s battered energy grid, robbing millions of power and water. The shelling was so devastating that it left half of neighbouring Moldova without electricity. The widespread destruction is raising fears of a massive exodus of refugees ahead of the winter season.
Against this backdrop of desolation and horror, the European Parliament passed this week a strongly-worded resolution declaring Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” over the “brutal and inhumane” acts inflicted upon Ukraine and its population.
“I see this resolution mostly as a political statement and an important sign of solidarity,” Sergey Lagodinsky, a German MEP who sits with the Greens, told Euronews.
Although the text has no legal implications, its content is highly symbolic. Shortly after MEPs approved the resolution by an overwhelming margin, the European Parliament’s website was hacked by a “sophisticated cyberattack” and became temporarily unavailable.
“What do you call a state that attacks citizens, that is guilty of over 40,000 documented war crimes? A state that tries to kill civilians by freezing them to death?” said Vlad Gheorghe, a Romanian MEP from Renew Europe.
“This is a very important step, but it can also be a step that leads to more freezing of Russian state assets and giving those straight back to Ukraine.”
The confiscation of Russian assets has become an acute dilemma for the European Union. Under an unprecedented raft of sanctions, the bloc has frozen about $300 billion in funds from Russia’s central bank, together with high-value assets held by dozens of blacklisted oligarchs.
But how to confiscate these possessions and turn them into money for Ukraine’s reconstruction remains an unresolved question. State assets are protected under international law, while there is no legal framework in place to expropriate private property of sanctioned individuals.
“Every decision that we take, it needs to be based in law and we are now writing that legislation in order for us to be able to get to the Russian assets,” Gheorghe said.
“We will not be able to do it alone. We will probably need additional funding. And this additional funding is the funding of the perpetrator,” Lagodinsky added. “So, we need to get our act together, intellectually, and see how we can conceptualise a possible way to get to that money.”
But as the EU scrambles to find new financial sources to help Ukraine maintain its state budget and repair its badly-damaged infrastructure, a pressing challenge emerges at home: how to tackle the spiralling energy crisis and support vulnerable households and companies.
“We will not be able to sustain this winter and give the much-needed social and financial help to the citizens, if member states do not help each other,” Lagodinsky said. “That’s why I think that we will not be able to avoid getting more mutual debt as the European Union in order to have a solidarity fund.”
“But to be honest,” he continued, “our burdens, as much as I understand our burdens, are not comparable to the burdens of Ukrainians, who are being killed, tortured and raped right now.”
Sitting by his side, Vlad Gheorghe agreed, expressing confidence that Europe’s solidarity with Ukraine will remain firm and unwavering all through the winter and beyond.
“Peace is priceless. You simply cannot put a price on peace,” he said. “We are Europeans. We have it now. We understand how to appreciate it more because we have a war at our borders.”
“We, as a union, are as strong as the link between our states,” Gheorghe added. “So this is our strength, our solidarity and our unity. If we lose that, we lose everything to Putin.”
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The Briefing: Plunged into darkness
