Why should Putin be allowed to keep seized Russian assets?

The seizure of enemy treasure, formerly known as plunder and pillage, is an ancient tool of war. Though still practised in the world’s nastiest conflict zones, it’s a tricky business within a rules-based international order. The G7’s agreement to lend $50 billion to Ukraine – using income from $300 billion of frozen Russian assets to cover interest and repayments on the loan – is a vivid case in point. And some would say, a lily-livered half-measure.

The key feature of the deal is that it does not actually claim ownership of Russian loot – which however ill-gotten is mostly held in EU banks in the form of western government bonds. It merely diverts interest payments due on the bonds from the issuing governments. But why not confiscate the capital itself, given that the Putin regime clearly has no respect for any order other than its own and has in recent times plundered the Russia-based investments of numerous foreign energy companies as well as the likes of Danone, the French dairy group, and Carlsberg, the Danish brewer?

According to the Kennan Institute, a US thinktank, ‘no western company’s property is safe from effective nationalisation in Russia’, while the Washington Post argues for the ‘elegant justice’ of transferring frozen Russian assets direct to Ukraine.