Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in Italy for the G7 summit.
Frozen Russian assets will soon fund Ukraine’s war and recovery efforts. G7 leaders agreed to lend Ukraine $50 billion, backed by interest generated on nearly $300 billion worth of immobilized Russian assets.
President of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen said, “We will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. It is also a strong signal to Putin that Putin cannot outlast us.”
“This is something that I and the UK have personally championed and led on for a while now so it’s very positive to see it close to the finish line,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said.
But experts say the package won’t dramatically change Ukraine’s economic picture.
“The damage they have sustained so far and the losses they continue to incur means 50bil is not the maximum they should be getting it’s the minimum,” University of Toronto political scientist, Aurel Braun said.
Canada is also slapping new sanctions on Russia and will target its military and industrial sectors.
“Because we have taken so long in the case of what we are doing in Serbia-Russia, in essence, Russia has had time to prepare itself for some of these sanctions so they’re not likely to be as effective,” Braun said.
Russia is warning the West to wait for a quote “extremely painful” retaliation. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “this illegal initiative, linked to attempts to pump up the Kyiv regime with money at someone else’s expense, threatens to completely unbalance the financial system and create cataclysmic crises.”
The U.S. and Ukraine also announced a 10-year bilateral security agreement after a year of difficult negotiations.
