 Welcome, my name is Lisa Grande. I'm the head of the United States Institute of Peace. The Institute was created in 1984 by Congress. It has a mandate dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. We're a public nonpartisan institute. It is our great honor today to welcome His Excellency Dennis Meljuska, Ukraine's Minister of Justice. We're here for an important discussion on the possibility of using the seized Russian assets to finance the reconstruction and the defense of Ukraine. And we're here to discuss the role that the United States can play on this issue. There's been a lot of discussion about the seized assets. The estimates are that as much as $280 billion of frozen Russian assets are sitting in Western banking systems. Almost everyone recognizes that Ukraine has the moral right to use these assets. But how they're used, for what purpose, reconstruction, defense, does remain the subject of considerable debate. There are, of course, serious risks that are involved in the use of these assets or in the direction of those assets. The Russian government could retaliate by seizing Western assets that are under Russian jurisdiction. If the assets were to be used, we could see a withdrawal of other foreign sovereign wealth assets from the US and European banking system. These are some of the concerns. However, with European financial assistance to Ukraine faltering and US assistance currently on hold, this discussion is more important now and more timely now than it has ever been. We're so pleased that we have Ambassador David Scheffer, who will be moderating our conversation. We would like to welcome everyone to this, most particularly our friends from the Ukrainian Embassy. Excellency. It's a privilege to have you here. Thank you. Welcome to everyone to today's very, very important discussion about how to deal with this $286 billion estimated of frozen assets now of the Russian Federation in connection with the invasion of Ukraine and the consequences of it. Minister, I want to start by asking you briefly, of course, you live in the middle of a war right now in Kiev. And also, you have an interesting personal background that you bring to this mission at the Ministry of Justice. Could you just introduce yourself for a few moments in terms of how you arrived at your position in the Ministry of Justice and what it's like to work in a war zone in a bureaucratic institution like the Ministry of Justice within the Ukrainian government? Yeah, good question. I really hope we are not in the middle of the war, but somewhere close to the end. But with regards to how I became a minister, my kids still believe it was a mistake on my part. Somehow, maybe I understood wrongly what is expected. Still, I was practicing lawyer, had private practice. At a certain point of time, I became consultant and then full-time employee of the World Bank Group. Initially, IFC then there was created a global practice where IFC and World Bank merged different initiatives so I worked in Kiev, based in Kiev, but worked for the region, focusing mostly on investment climate reforms. So I spent some years advising Ukrainian government, so I knew all in and out, like networks matter. And when President Zelensky was elected, so his approach to creation of the government and actually to creation of a team was that he wanted a complete reshuffle so that new people could come, who never worked previously for the government or inside the parliament. So the approach was no person who had an experience of being a member of parliament before would be allowed to enter the list for the Slugano-Rodov party. So that's why that created kind of good opportunity to join. So that's where I made that mistake. I was elected as a member of parliament, so I was included in the Slugano-Rodov party list. Didn't do much work during the election campaign since I helped office of the president and the president himself to start his work until the reelection and election campaign to the parliament. So I have been a member of parliament during one day, managed to register about 50 laws. So everyone was voting. I was running in and out, like registered draft laws we prepared beforehand. Then I joined the first cabinet where Goncharuk was a prime minister. After a half year when Goncharuk resigned, a new prime minister came. Again, I remained as a minister of justice and still it's four years and a half I'm the minister. So I'm not pretty new to the job since I consulted quite a lot, but still it's like from inside it's a completely different picture. Minister of Justice is huge. We had up to 50,000 employees. Now it's a bit less because it's not like a classical ministry. We are a bit different from the rest of the ministries so that we take care about legal aid. All legal aid network is ours. Baylor system is ours. Prison system is ours. Quite a lot of activities inside Ukraine, formally it's a part of the ministry. So it's a tough job, but it became significantly more difficult during the war. We received different tasks to perform like prisoners of war. We didn't have any regulations how to deal with them. We became the main agency responsible for Russian assets, both internally. So we are dealing with confiscation. There is a separate procedure of that, a sanction. And also we have our primary goal outside the country is actually seizure of Russian assets outside the country in foreign countries. And of course the most attractive goal would be to get access to sovereign assets of Russian Federation, meaning reserves of the Central Bank. That's why I'm here. Thank you so much. You obviously have not been a cloistered lawyer. You have been out and about and that gives you an appreciation when you see the destruction of civilian property, in particular infrastructure in Ukraine. I think you have probably a good sense of what that means from your World Bank experience and other experiences. I want to jump immediately into one of the most topical issues today and then we can sort of fall back on larger issues. But right now there's discussion about whether or not the frozen assets of Russia, which are not seized assets yet, but frozen assets, should be directed towards the defense needs of Ukraine at this very critical period in the war or simply reserved for reconstruction efforts. Do you have a sense from Kyiv of whether you would entertain the idea of any funds going into defense needs from the Russian assets or is the general attitude that it should all be reserved for reconstruction requirements? Really good question. I was never asked about it. But I have an answer to that. Initially, we thought that Russian assets shall be spent only on reconstruction. So be it during the war, we still spend some Russian assets seized on the territory of Ukraine. We spend them on reconstruction activities. And we hoped that we would be able to keep them and gradually step-by-step spend year after year to reconstruct what we have given that the amount of damages as assessed by the World Bank is almost 500 billion dollars. That would mean that even if we confiscate everything, that would not be sufficient to cover everything. But at a certain point of time, quite recently, we realized that this was a good dream, but the reality is significantly more tough. And our assessment shows that in 2025, and even maybe by the end of 2024, we will not have sufficient funds to cover non-military needs. Why is that? Because all our taxpayers' money, everything we collect, is spent on the war effort. For technical reasons that our international partners not always are able to help with military assistance. So it's easier for many countries to give us loans or grants on non-military purposes. And that's why we spend everything we have on these war efforts. So in terms of non-military expenditures, we have to rely on direct financial assistance or loans. And the appetite on the part of our partners to help us with that is decreasing with time. So now we realize that some part of Russian assets, probably we would like to have them as a financial assistance to the budget. It could be regarded as reparations till the budget really suffered because of the war, but still that would be a necessity to us. We are not talking about spending to cover a budgetary gap like the whole sum, the whole amount, but at least part of it could be saved for that purpose. With regards to the military purposes, it's even more pessimistic scenario, I would say. To a certain extent, that's not really fair after all. We fight for all of us, for the world rule-based order. And everyone understands that we need to be assisted with those sort of money. And if we would accept and entertain the idea that Russian assets shall be sent also to cover military needs, then technically that would mean that we shall forget about proper reconstruction, that would destroy our dreams. This is difficult. Of course, at a certain point of time, we could be in a position that, well, we do not have any choice and we need to spend that money also on military needs, but that would be the most pessimistic scenario I could ever imagine with regards to sending money to Ukraine. But under necessity, if there would be no other sources, then we would have no choice and we would accept that as well, definitely. And I might add that all of the plans which are on the table right now are to allocate this for reconstruction funds. No one's putting any formal plan down whatsoever that would allocate it to defense. But I think the important point you just made was, yes, reconstruction, but also there might be some budgetary requirements for the basic services of government that are becoming critical. Health care, welfare, salaries to civil service or whatever, just to run the government. There are basic needs without them. Our government and country will not be run smoothly as it is and it's not only people who are fighting, we are fighting also, but on different fronts. Now, you are moving around in the world and I think it would be helpful for the audience to understand with respect to how to deal with the frozen assets, could you just identify the key governments you're having to deal with? I assume it's the United States, it's Belgium, where Euroclear has, you know, 200 billion of the 286 billion. But we also read of obviously the G7 governments being concerned as well. Which governments and entities, including the EU, do you directly have to deal with to address the treatment of the frozen assets? You actually described everything correct. So, of course, we have to negotiate with the US. Within the EU was the European Commission, but also with European heavyweights, Germany, France. You mentioned Belgium, yes, they have, they actually sit on this pile of money because of the Euroclear headquartered in Brussels. So, those are major counterparts. Broad circle would be G7. Again, there are different approaches among G7 countries, but still each and every country within that group is important to us. They are actually decision makers. We also asked by our colleagues and partners to talk more intensively to Global South. Of course, Global South is not like a decision maker. There are no Russian sovereign assets there, but our partners and we believe as well that there should not be a line drawn between developed countries, G7, and the rest of the world. So that it would be beneficial to have everyone on board with their idea. And given the concerns which are raised and during the opening remarks, they were clearly like stated a couple of them. It is important to have an understanding between as many countries as possible that this is a right thing to do and there would not be damaging consequences with regards to any other country except for Russia. So that is our message and we try to address it by way of negotiations and explanations. And of course, we are lawyers, me and my team. And from the legal perspective, we do not see any major problems in terms of confiscation. There is existing law allowing that, existing rules. In any case, if any country believes that existing framework is not sufficient for confiscation, we are open for a discussion of what new framework or new regulation shall be adopted or treaties concluded. So again, that is a part of our broader efforts, but major focus is on G7. That's true. You just opened up the issue I wanted to broad. So I'm going to ask you a couple of questions relating to it. The G7 came out a few weeks ago in February with a very strong statement of the obligation on the view of the G7 that Russia must pay reparations to Ukraine. So that was a very firm statement by the G7. They did not take the next step to say with unity that that can be achieved through the confiscation of the frozen assets, because there are different points of view among the different governments of the G7, with the United States in Canada recently and the United States quite recently actually tipping its hat towards a right of confiscation for this purpose. But we still have France and Germany and the United Kingdom being on the fence as to how this can be accomplished under international law. So there's kind of a debate within the G7 on the end game. But interestingly, they arrived at a solid statement about the right of reparations last month. Can you give us sort of your perspective on, and it won't surprise anyone, I'm sure, but it would be good to hear, Ukraine's position on the right of reparations from Russia, because that might be part of negotiation at some point with Russia as well. But also, are you trying to navigate, or how are you trying to navigate, what remains kind of a policy difference, or at least not a clarified one yet, of between the G7 governments, about how to actually seize the assets? Well, there are differences in views on how to do that. Different approaches are supported by different countries. The most advanced one is here in the U.S. There are a couple of bills aimed at confiscation, repo bill, name is known to many experts here. We do support that initiative. It's about complete confiscation, sending money to Ukrainian needs, quite a radical and justified approach, I would say, based on the motion of countermeasures. In a nutshell, that would mean that there are affected countries affected by the war, not only Ukraine, quite a lot of our neighbors in the U.S. as well has to spend money on refugees, businesses, Western businesses are affected and had significant losses. There are some security expenditures necessary to be made. So given that those countries who keep Russian assets also struggled and were affected by the war, they could apply countermeasures, meaning to pause or lift entirely sovereign immunity of Russian Federation. So if Russia violates international law, then countermeasures could be applied by avoiding fulfillment of certain obligations with regards to Russia. So that argumentation allows lifting sovereign immunity and confiscation of sovereign assets and sending the money to Ukraine. The approach of European countries is significantly more moderate, so they are not ready to negotiate and discuss confiscation of the principle. They do support, at least it looks like that, confiscation of the proceeds, profits obtained in a way or as a result of administration of sovereign assets. We are talking about three, maybe five billion per year. And that approach is based on the assumption that those profits, windfall profits, are not the property of Russian Central Bank and they could be distinguished from the principle amount and they could be sent to Ukraine but technically from that perspective, that money is not Russian. So based on that approach, they are developing a framework to allow that. Well, we are grateful for that as well. This is kind of really significant amount of money but that approach differs significantly from the approach taken by the US. And recently there were some calls for a third way when Russian sovereign assets are used as a collateral. So there would be an issuance of euro bonds by Ukraine or by other countries without a guarantee of certain countries and Russian assets would be used as a collateral against the payment. So technically it is a bit more difficult but it is possible. With regards to the right to get reparations, I haven't met anyone challenging the statement that we have the right to get reparations. We all understand clearly that there is no way that Russia would pay those reparations voluntarily. I was a part of the team which tried to negotiate some sort of peace treaty or how we could call it at the beginning of the war in 2022 after the full-scale invasion there was a short period of negotiations and one of the major and crucial demands of the Russian delegation was that we signed a waiver and refused to require any sort of reparations on compensations and all our issues to international tribunal shall be withdrawn. So that was like the topic they were not willing to negotiate that was one of their major demands. So we understand their position clearly. They will never agree to voluntarily payment of reparations until maybe the regime change but in that case we shall understand what will happen next after Putin but clearly we need to think about like forceful, mandatory mechanism for Russians to pay reparations. In addition to what will happen next since as I already mentioned we keep fighting Russians keep destroying our country the amount of damages already exceeds the amount of sovereign assets freezed in just seven countries and on the territory of our allies so we would also need to think about other mechanisms like for instance to impose attacks on Russian revenues from oil and gas or whatever other resources are available to fill compensation funds and we also there is like our initiative to establish a register for damages already done so there is an international organization register of damages for Ukraine already created it is developing a software to keep all the data about damages. Next step would be creation and negotiations and establishment of compensation commission and compensation funds so that fund could be used as a tool to collect both sovereign assets and some process taken away from Russia when it is allowed to trade commodities so that's how we see it and we really hope that we will get support and support will continue. I'm going to turn to questions in just a moment but one comment and then one final question from me which is I think it is important when you pointed out the third possibility which is the frozen assets as collateral for what could be sovereign bonds perhaps backed up with guarantees from governments. There is also another way in which those frozen assets could be regarded as collateral reported out by the Canadian NGO World Refugee and Migration Council a few weeks ago points to the methodology whereby you can bring the private sector into an arrangement for social bonds which has the frozen assets as a backup collateral ultimately if necessary but not necessarily in other words there is a scheme to work this so that you bring the private sector into the equation as well but what I want to emphasize is that as long as those frozen assets are not seized and they just sit there as collateral you do minimize the court challenges that Russia could raise because they're all under frozen status until that ultimate moment if they're possibly seized as collateral and that's to your benefit in other words you delay those challenges that can complicate the situation for you I have a last question which is it does appear as if what is happening with Ukraine and the frozen assets of Russia is in a sense creating a new type of deterrence in international affairs in other words a very strong message that if as a nation at the worst of crimes which is massive aggression resulting in massive atrocity crimes everything comes together and you're responsible for it then there's an opening in international practice and I think through precedent international law that yeah there's a deterrent that is justifiable which is if you've got if you've got assets overseas they can be frozen and you can be investigated for the worst type of behavior we can imagine on the part of a nation state and while I've sort of done a little editorializing there minister is that a general attitude that you're looking at it as well that this is a deterrent principle that you're developing yeah well first of all I'd like to mention and explain these are assets of a sovereign central bank so they are not protected by private property rules or private protection or whatever you can call under major conventions European conventions or like global conventions so whenever anyone is saying that protection of the property is not allowing us to move forward this is not true we are talking about sovereign money and risks for litigation are quite limited and low since there is no forum where Russia could come and claim and get any meaningful result so their ability to litigate is close to zero as our ability as well so we cannot get any forum to resolve that sort of dispute and award a significant amount of payments which could be enforced anywhere but let's put that aside deterrent you are right at the beginning we were not that ambitious to introduce a new deterrent into the global security framework we have in the world but still this is a good argument we used it what I would say it's even a bit more than that we see it from a different perspective we had that period when the banking system was cleaned from dirty money from the money of unknown origin when mafia or other corrupted officials refused to get access to the banking system where financial monitoring was introduced and it was painful for businesses commercial banks lost quite a lot of clients but ultimately it was beneficial to them whenever you would say let's imagine the world when financial monitoring does not exist whether banks would be able to return back to operating with mafia same here so it's going to be a bit painful to lose Russia as a client in terms of administrating funds but ultimately it's going to be beneficial to everyone to those who administer funds they would be more safely put in the system there would no be political pressure disputes they would remain under other now who knew in Ukraine about Euroclear or in general audience no one knew the name now it's everywhere and I'm not really sure they are happy about that so it's good for business to remain under the others and it's good for business not to deal with some problematic clients and ultimately we will benefit and that indeed would create a deterrent we would like to emphasize and ask our partners to make that deterrent not really broad enough not to scare everyone out so that it is not applied back and forth here and there otherwise the reliability of keeping sovereign assets safe would be decreased to a minimal level when nobody would be sure what to do and where to keep money everyone would end up like everyone would invest in gold and had some sellers full with gold and that would be a huge blow to financial system but to limit it to outright aggression when the border is changed by force which happened in case of the war launched by Russia when we have almost unanimous support worldwide everyone understands and agrees that there was a grab of territory and the value of territorial integrity is understood by everyone in that narrow case when everything is black and white to ensure a proper deterrence as a possible consequence under that sort of scenario that would be great this is kind of maximum goal we could set but there are others more negative scenarios just imagine the world where the money is not confiscated and when the world starts negotiations with Russia agreeing to refuse the rights of Ukraine to certain territories what the message that would be that would be not a deterrent but incentive for others to use the force so the risks here are not that we will create additional deterrent from violation of international law but we actually could fail to keep existing deterrence already put in place throughout our history and it will disappear and one could only imagine what will happen next if each and every totalist country would decide that this is kind of profitable we could move forward and if we took like only mathematics into account Russia wouldn't lose anything quite a lot of hundreds of thousands of their people or soldiers are dead but mathematically they obtained more people than they lost by occupying our territories so some assets are lost but they are much more significant assets as a way of occupation they received a control over the biggest nuclear power station in Europe by way of occupation this is profitable business and one should calculate what is more profitable or what is more risky to lose sovereign assets or to grab a territory with all factories people industry base and even from the military perspective they say that there would no be a chance or that Russia would not try to launch a conscription and mobilize all the people to their army and would attack another country by using Ukrainian people under threat so that would happen quite a lot of prisoners of war I met them personally who are Ukrainian citizens forced to enter Russian army and they immediately preferred to became a prisoner of war when they had a patunity but many of them didn't had such a patunity they were afraid so again from that perspective if we use simple mathematics that would show that even to keeps up minor negative consequences for Russia would be difficult not to say of introduction of new type of deterrence for such types of behavior so we are in much more dangerous situation right now I'm not really sure everyone understand that or cares about that at least in the short period of time but longer consequences are really terrifying well on that note I want to open it up for questions and yes we've got the mic coming around Ministers, thank you so very much for being here today and shedding such important light on this critical issue I'm Dr Elaine Serejo I am the associate rector of a Ukrainian university and my question is can you can you see how possibly the frozen funds could be used as a leveraging factor in peace negotiations with Ukraine you've already touched on their control of property and people and like the power plant and so forth and would you address that if you can thank you using sovereign funds as a leverage for peace negotiations is a negative scenario for us okay that would mean that Russia still has a stronger line a stronger position in negotiation that would mean that we would need to surrender certain our ideas in certain position that would mean that we are weak at the negotiation cable and really wouldn't like to have that sort of scenario so if we start imagining what type of negative scenarios could exist that would be really nightmare activity and I would rather avoid that so anything could happen we cannot exclude even the opportunity that we would lose the war entirely not supplied with military or financial assistance there would be no reason to negotiate Putin will occupy the whole territory of the country and he will not care about anything and in comparison to what they got and what they received as revenues from like oil and gas supplies they make the revenues from the commodity that they sell is pretty much significant to the extent they could allow themselves to forget about sovereign assets that's why I do not see that they are aggressive to the maximum point possible when they hear about confiscation probably inside their minds they already forgot about those assets they would try to use that as a leverage no doubt with that but this is not something substantial which could put Putin into some limits and make him behave I do not expect that so let's better forget about sovereign assets as possible leverage it won't be useful other tools are much better we cannot exclude negotiations that could happen but it would be better to have strong Ukraine at the negotiation table not a weak one otherwise consequences would be terrifying to the same extent as complete failure and loss of the war I'll take the blue in the back and then up front Hello I have two quick questions one is the is the money is it all Russian government money from Russian oligarchs forgive my naivety and my second question is what's the UK's role on all this because obviously for years there was a lot of Russian money floating around the UK and there was even a report on the British news last night about Russian cars or British cars that were still getting into Russia through Azerbaijan so I'd just be curious to know what the minister's opinion on those two questions are thank you we are looking mainly on sovereign assets meaning assets of the sovereign state what I said today is only about sovereign assets assets of the state I'm not talking here at all about private money since it's much more difficult to get that they are protected this is a private property and they could be confiscated under pretty much unique circumstances like avoiding of sanctions etc and the amount of money which could be confiscated from a Russian oligarchs is pretty much limited so we are talking about more or less simple exercise took a big chunk chunk of money from one owner state and the money which is not protected by any sort of history or Magna Carta by any UK or whatever this is sovereign money when there is no forum for litigation and no protection attached so whenever I hear about the difficulties of taking away money of oligarchs I agree with that there are centuries long tradition of protection of private property and it would be a civilizational uterine on the part of our partners to agree on simple confiscation because the owners are Russian citizens who behave badly we understand that and we do not ask for that at least in the short run but in the longer run there is also an opportunity particularly to focus on SOA at the prices and UK is a good supporter of us not the most advanced one but not the most skeptical of our allies somewhere in the middle and I would even say closer to the champions of confiscation so we really will talk to them they are members of G7 they are important country with the views and recently they announced their views that they could consider mechanism where Russian assets are used as collateral so good partners of ours closer to optimistic level more radical one and we are really glad of negotiating with them close to the results but they do not have much soreness at all Belgium is the most important one and if we could have your name which I forgot on the last one my name is Luzin Basha I'm the rapporteur of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe on the issue of seizure of Russian state assets I was in New York on Friday in Amoudra we had a discussion with a number of representatives from the member states there discussing the correlation between the Council of Europe from my side and the United Nations which paved the way through its resolutions of November and March 2022 and 2023 we are now at an advanced stage in January the political committee of the parliamentary assembly approved draft resolution and recommendation for the creation of a mechanism adjacent to the registry for damages which was created in May last year by the Council of Ministers a mechanism that would be composed of two elements a claims commission and an international trust fund where the signatories would deposit the assets they have already frozen to go back to what you said the constitution of assets in itself is a countermeasure even the suspension of a sovereign right is a countermeasure so it basically would mean going all the way with this countermeasure it would not mean the introduction of a new countermeasure so it would require political will obviously by states that see the aggression for what it is a violation of an erga omnis of a peremptory norm of international law would Ukraine support this mechanism, would it be in line with your needs and with your vision as far as Russian state assets are concerned definitely so sometimes I cannot distinguish parliamentary assembly from Ukrainian parliament the same page to the extent to the maximum possible extent thanks for that and again I really appreciate we all really appreciate the support we have at the parliamentary assembly and that is quite important to us you perfectly described what we all intend to do and the mechanism we are trying to implement but the problem for me is that I have a feeling that I'm in sort of a bubble when everyone is friendly with us I'm still trying to find the opponents where they what are your arguments and yep true we with regards to countermeasures again true the only thing lacking in our negotiations and on the part of our counterparts is a political will, true so whenever there is a political will there would be a way in which they are raised they do not make me feel persuaded by that they are really justified let's take legal ones countermeasures, obvious solutions to the problem reliability of euro or US dollar as reserve currency well pretty much weird arguments since other countries would not have much choice to put their money they would not go to China or India if anyone wanted to do that they already did so anyway they will keep their money in Europe, in the US UK or Switzerland and we all have made agreement how to move forward with that so like to be afraid of money to escape just seven countries no way an argument that probably some confiscation will happen on the territory of Russia well firstly they already did what they want they will continue that whatever we do with Russian sovereign essence and there are still plenty of state-owned enterprises Russian state-owned enterprises operating in the territory of Europe and the US so if they want to escalate you could escalate, not even escalate but to do the same what they will do to compensate businesses who would have losses on the territory of Russian Federation and probably those businesses would benefit from that since now they are trying to move away from Russian market and they sell their assets for one dollar or whatever and in case confiscation happens on the part of Russia they first would have a possibility to sue them to start litigation on different venues or to ask countermeasures on the part of western governments and to be compensated by them and there are quite rich SOEs operating here so what else do we have there are some like concerns with regards to histories and whenever this happens to Russian assets and other countries would demand to be compensated for different historical events but those historical events is our past we tend to forget about that and if we are talking about some wars happened like decades ago there is no ground to apply countermeasures since there is no war you cannot apply countermeasures to the war which ended so there is no danger with that as well what else do we have concern about litigation there is no forum for litigation concern about military escalation even Russians didn't threaten anyone that in case of confiscation they will do something bad but that concern already outdated even the basic supply of the military equipment at certain point of time during the war was put on a pause because of that concern but everyone forget about that this is not serious so what do we have actually in a nutshell there is no any valid argument why not to do that it's just too many myths related to this confiscation and probably lack of political will and maybe the only valid argument meaning that it's not could be outright put aside to use sovereign assets as a tool for negotiations but I do not see any prospect for negotiations in like nearest future without Ukraine as a strong force at the negotiation table and to become strong at the negotiation table you don't need to bring Russian assets at the table to bring some military might be it Ukrainian or others don't really, doesn't really matter so that's the major point putting understands only force due to his background he doesn't understand law morality, rule based order it's not for him he is of different nature he attacks force as a counter argument and let's forget about anything else which could be used to persuade him I think we have time for one possibly two more questions Hans, yes, right here Yes, hello my name is Ala Rogers and I'm working in the field of art and culture for global peace education network my question for you is the statistics that have been collected so far about seizure of cultural patrimony in occupied territory and in territory that has been reduced to rubble in Ukraine is greater than the Nazi seizure of art assets during World War II it's enormous and so just as an example for instance if the looting of museums in Mariupol represents the confiscation of all of the Ivazovsky paintings that were in Crimea at the time has a commission been established to assess the value of cultural patrimony that has been seized or destroyed by Russia as part of the valuation that you could include in your calculation of what has been lost Really good point to the best of my knowledge the price of our heritage and cultural assets was not included in the assessment Fully I have a correction on my team that it was sorry I made a mistake I still don't understand how that happened but if you can give an update on that I would be really grateful Irina is my deputy critic Good question because the damage to our cultural heritage it really enormous and according to the third rapid damage at needs assessment which was conducted by World Bank together with international organizations as of 31 December 2023 evaluation cost to Ukrainian culture due to full scale Russian invasion meaning after 24 February 2022 is estimated at $2.85 billion and of course this figure is not final it will be much bigger when we will liberate our territories and discover what actually happened there but just a few comments on the most outrageous Russian attacks on Ukrainian heritage where the missile strikes on the objects of cultural heritage of the great importance for humanity so World Heritage Property Center of Odessa National Hryhorivsko-Vorodan Museum Ivankin Historical and Local History Museum and Karazin National University so these are objects of the importance for the humanity not for Ukraine so you can imagine how we have daily missile attacks and they are indiscriminate to infrastructure residential districts deliberately to cultural heritage I do believe and it's really it's the number of these damages and destruction will be much more higher but there are international organizations who are together with Ukraine are participating in collecting the evidences of information preserving and by the way the register which was mentioned by Mr. Basha the category of damages will include the damage caused to Ukraine culture and heritage objects so all this information will be duly preserved and I do hope that the next component of the compensation mechanism Claims Commission and Compensation Fund established within some reasonable time so that to get the decisions on the amount of compensation to be paid to private individuals, to legal entities as well as to the state and finally we will come to the issue that is Russia pays itself and fulfills its duty it's not the right to get reparation it's duty of Russia to make reparations according to customary international law and according to articles of responsibility of the state for International Wrongful Act and is there it pays or the global community finds the way how to induce Russia to pay through getting access to Russian assets you see our Ministry of Culture is better than I expected they managed to include the damages for that but the damages starting from 2014 when Russia and Crimea really terrifying we managed to get back something particularly exhibition which was presented at Netherlands and got stuck there for many many years of litigation we were successful we returned back that exhibition Ancient Gold was there but still quite a lot of treasuries so that is a disaster from that perspective I think that's where we come to an end in a closure as we're just past 12.30 here in Washington DC thanks to everyone for coming and thank you Minister for such a splendid explanation of so much detail but also of general principles as well we appreciate that thanks for having me