EU taps Russian assets for Ukraine arms: How much does Kyiv stand to gain?

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00:00 European Union leaders are discussing a plan today to use billions of euros in

00:03 frozen profits from frozen Russian financial assets to buy arms for Ukraine

00:09 as they try to bolster Kiev. The bloc's 27 national leaders also to debate how

00:13 Europe can do more to defend itself and boost its own arms industry, reflecting

00:17 fears that Russia may not stop at Ukraine and the US may not be such a

00:21 staunch protector of Europe in the future.

00:25 I hope that we can reach an agreement soon and change banknotes into weapons

00:33 because your soldiers don't fight with banknotes. They need physical arms. They

00:39 need physical instruments in order to defend your people.

00:43 Josep Borrell there. Well let's have the latest then from Brussels. Here's our

00:47 correspondent there, Dave Keating.

00:53 The 27 national EU leaders will today be discussing a proposal from the European

00:59 Commission that came out yesterday to confiscate the windfall profits from

01:03 seized Russian assets. Now this isn't seizing the entirety of the 210 billion

01:10 euros that are held in Europe from the Russian Central Bank. This is only taking

01:15 the windfall profits, basically the interest that that money generates, and

01:20 giving it to Ukraine. The big controversy has been that some countries don't want

01:25 that money spent on weapons. So that's the neutral countries, Austria and the

01:30 islands of Malta, Cyprus and Ireland, and also the more Russia-leaning countries,

01:35 Hungary and Slovakia, which say that continuing to arm Ukraine is

01:39 unnecessarily prolonging the war. And so yesterday we saw this proposal adjusted

01:44 that only 90% of those proceeds will go toward weapons and the other 10% will go

01:49 toward the Ukrainian budget. So we'll see today if that's enough to convince

01:54 those wavering countries. The thing is, even that 90% is going toward the

01:57 European Peace Facility, which is the facility that's already been set up to

02:02 send EU money to buy weapons for Ukraine that's bought on national level. That's

02:07 already been adjusted for the neutral countries to make sure that countries

02:11 like Ireland, which are constitutionally forbidden from participating in war,

02:15 aren't sending weapons but are actually sending other types of things. Now I'm

02:19 being told we shouldn't expect a resolution on this today because there's

02:23 a lot of legal issues here. You might be asking why don't they just confiscate

02:27 the entire 210 million euros that is being held here. Well that's because EU

02:32 countries, particularly here in Belgium where a lot of that money is, are worried

02:36 about the legal challenges to that that actually eventually that would work its

02:40 way through international courts and they would have to give that money back

02:43 with interest. So it would actually end up costing the EU countries money to

02:47 have made this legal mistake. They're still a little worried even about

02:50 taxing these windfall profits so they need lawyers to look into this but

02:53 they'll discuss it today. The big issue today will be the principle of whether

02:57 or not these neutral and Russia friendly countries can tolerate the money going

03:02 toward weapons.

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