Yellen, speaking to reporters by phone during a surprise trip to Kyiv, said the the United States would study Ukraine’s calls to impose sanctions on Russia’s nuclear energy sector, but needed to be “mindful” of potential consequences of such an action on Western allies.
Yellen said the United States and its allies were discussing strategies to ensure that Russia pays for the devastation that its war, now in its second year, with estimates in the hundreds of billions of dollars and growing every day.
Washington has confiscated assets used in criminal activity but central bank and other large pools of assets frozen by sanctions are another matter.
“We have on this small scale, seized assets, but there are certainly legal challenges in doing more than that,” she said.
The United States and Western allies have seized more than $300 billion in Russian central bank foreign currency assets frozen by sanctions. The assets are held abroad, with a significant…
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