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Keir Starmer should show leadership over the Ukraine war by pushing for $300bn (£243bn) of frozen Russian assets to be used to fund Kyiv’s military, the financier turned activist Bill Browder has said.
Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Browder warned that if US military support for Ukraine dried up, Russia would make territorial gains in the near-three-year long conflict, forcing millions of Ukrainians to flee the country.
Browder predicts “a refugee problem like we’ve never seen before”, estimating that 15 million people could leave Ukraine if US military aid ended without a substitute.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump ordered a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance programmes, but Ukrainian officials are hopeful that blockade will not apply to their military aid.
Browder said delays to a package of US military support in early 2024 allowed Russia to make advances into Ukraine, and fears a repeat now Trump is back in the White House, if the president decides to force negotiations by suspending aid.
Browder’s solution is to take the $300bn of foreign currency, gold and government bonds belonging to the Russian central bank which were frozen after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and spend it on weapons.
“It shows a profound lack of leadership on our part not to have done this before, but it’s not too late,” said Browder, who believes the problem is that “nobody wants to step up and be a leader”, so are going along with the status quo.
“Keir Starmer could be the leader in this whole thing. Emmanuel Macron could be. The Germans can’t put a leader up until after their election,” Browder pointed out.
Browder has been a leading campaigner against Vladimir Putin’s regime since his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested and died in custody 15 years ago.
He argued that using Russia’s money in this way would prevent a new military catastrophe for Ukraine, and also “take Trump out of the driver’s seat” in terms of determining the outcome of the war. Failure to do so could lead to a refugee crisis, and also force Nato members to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP, as Trump has demanded.
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Browder criticised the lack of leadership from the UK over this issue, arguing that one of the benefits of Brexit is that it can take the lead, rather than “standing there in an EU straitjacket” and doing nothing. Browder said he has discussed the issue with the foreign secretary, David Lammy.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, criticised European leaders in a speech in Davos on Tuesday, in which he warned Europe could drift into irrelevance unless it lifts military spending.
“Will President Trump even notice Europe? Does he see Nato as necessary?” Zelenskyy asked.
Lammy’s predecessor, David Cameron, told the World Economic Forum last year that there were legal, moral and political justifications for using the frozen funds to help Ukraine. Other countries have been reluctant because of fears of legal repercussions. Last year, the US passed a new law allowing it to seize Russian state assets located in the US and use them for the benefit of Kyiv.
Browder also warned against a rushed peace deal with Moscow, and said it could open the door to Russian attacks on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – all Nato members – because Putin wants to prove the body is a “paper organisation”, not a true “treaty defence organisation”.
