The president of the European Council has urged EU capitals to press ahead with talks to use $300 billion in assets seized from the European Central Bank to rebuild Ukraine, as the scale of the destruction mounts.

 
Charles Michael, who represents the national leaders of the 27 European bloc, said he wanted to explore the idea of effectively managing the frozen assets of Russia's central bank to generate profits, which could then be allocated to reconstruction efforts.
 
Michel said in an interview with the Financial Times that he expected EU leaders to give some impetus to the discussions, adding that despite the legal hurdles to exploiting the assets, there is an argumentative political interest to make progress on the issue and achieve results.
 
The European Union and its allies froze hundreds of billions of Russian Central Bank funds at the beginning of the war last February. Moscow said the central bank's sanctions had resulted in the freezing of about $300 billion of its foreign reserves.
 
  Officials from the European Union and its institutions, including Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign policy official, put forward the idea of exploiting the assets for the benefit of rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure in Ukraine.
Source: agencies