MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - President Joe Biden has announced that the United States will provide $20 billion in loans to Ukraine that will be paid back by the interest earned from immobilized Russian sovereign assets.
'This is another reminder to Vladimir Putin that the world has rallied behind Ukraine-and the United States and our G7 partners will continue to stand with them every step of the way,' Biden said in a statement.
This is part of $50 billion loan that the G7 committed in Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration loans to Ukraine backed by the profits of immobilized Russian sovereign assets.
Daleep Singh, the White House Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics, said, 'The other $30 billion in loans will come from a combination of our G7 partners, including the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan.'
He said at a White House briefing that the G7 will begin disbursing the loan by the end of this year to meet Ukraine's urgent needs as the winter approaches.
Singh told reporters that the income used to repay these loans will be generated from frozen Russian assets held in the European Union.
The United States will disburse at least $10 billion of the loan proceeds for economic support to Ukraine.
'The United States also hopes to provide up to $10 billion of our loan as U.S. military support, but our ability to do that relies on Congress taking action before mid-December on certain legislative changes that allow us to make loans for military support under the contours of this broader G7 initiative,' Singh told reporters.
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the G7 nations decided to immobilize Russia's sovereign assets in their jurisdictions, and committed that these assets will remain immobilized until Russia ends its attacks and pays for the damage it has caused to Ukraine.
Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen and Ukraine's Minister of Finance Sergii Marchenko signed a joint statement in this regard. 'This means that as we look ahead, Russia will increasingly be forced to bear the costs of its illegal war, instead of taxpayers in the U.S. and Europe,' she said after the signing ceremony.
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