Russia Intensifies Ukraine Offensive as EU Plans to Seize Moscow’s Frozen Assets
“Russia attacked the Ukrainian port city of Odesa in the south of the country overnight on Friday, damaging civilian infrastructure and leaving parts of the city without electricity and water.”
Russia is widening its military offensive in Ukraine as Europe, on Friday, unveiled a bold plan to transfer frozen Russian assets to Kyiv. Amid reports of Russian troops gaining ground in the east, the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa was hit by overnight drone strikes, cutting the power and water supply.
A bulk carrier in Ukraine's Odesa region suffered damage and was on fire after a Russian attack on Friday – @Reuters
One of the sources said the vessel was in the port of Chornomorsk, one of Odesa region's three big Black Sea ports. Russia last week threatened to "cut Ukraine… pic.twitter.com/tLbyR4rclX— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) December 12, 2025
The disruption of public utilities in the Ukrainian hinterland has been Russia’s usual strategy of demoralizing the country’s population, particularly during the winter months. “Russia attacked the Ukrainian port city of Odesa in the south of the country overnight on Friday, damaging civilian infrastructure and leaving parts of the city without electricity and water,” French TV channel Euronews reported. “Russia has intensified its attacks against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure with the arrival of colder weather, in a repeat of what Moscow has done as part of its war strategy in previous years.”
The overnight strikes come as Russia is ramping up its winter offensive. In recent days, the Russian military has claimed the capture of the eastern Ukrainian towns of Pokrovsk and Siversk.
EU moves to seize frozen Russia assets to fund Ukraine war
Meanwhile, Britain, Germany, and France are firmly backing a European Union plan to use frozen Russian assets to finance the Ukraine war. “The EU has moved to create a legal basis to use Russian state assets for Ukraine by majority vote, aiming to block the funds from ever being returned to Moscow,” Germany’s DW TV reported Friday.
Most of the frozen Russian state assets in Europe are held by the Belgium-based financial clearing house Euroclear. BBC noted on that “In total, Russia has about €210bn of its assets, frozen in the EU within days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and €185bn of that is held by Euroclear.”
The Associated Press detailed the EU’s plan:
The European Union is expected on Friday to lock up Russia’s assets held in Europe until it gives up its war in Ukraine and compensates its neighbor for the heavy damage that it has inflicted for almost four years.
The move is an important step that would allow EU leaders to work out at a summit next week how to use the tens of billions of euros in Russian Central Bank assets to underwrite a huge loan to help Ukraine meet its financial and military needs over the next two years.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally in Europe – accused the European Commission, which prepared the decision, “of systematically raping European law.”
A total of 210 billion euros ($247 billion) in Russian assets are frozen in Europe. The vast majority of the funds — around 193 billion euros ($225 billion) at the end of September — are held in Euroclear, a Belgian financial clearing house.
While the UK and most EU members support the move, criticism came from Hungary, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban slamming it as “clearly unlawful.”
Today, the Brusselians are crossing the Rubicon. At noon, a written vote will take place that will cause irreparable damage to the Union.
The subject of the vote is the frozen Russian assets, on which the EU member states have so far voted every 6 months and adopted a unanimous…
— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) December 12, 2025
Russia countered the European action by filing a lawsuit on Friday against Belgium’s Euroclear. “Russia’s Central Bank said on Friday that it had filed a lawsuit in Moscow against the Belgium-based depository that holds about 185 billion euros ($217 billion) in immobilized Russian state assets, which European officials are looking to use to extend a giant loan to Ukraine,” The New York Times reported.
Zelensky visits frontline, says Ukraine pushing back Russians in the east
President Zelensky, on Friday, visited the eastern frontline and announced that the Ukrainian military was pushing back against the Russian forces and advancing on the ground.”Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had visited troops fending off Russian advances near the embattled city of Kupiansk that Moscow claimed to have captured, which Kyiv denies,” The Guardian (UK) reported Friday. “Earlier today, the Ukrainian military said it had liberated several villages near the north-eastern town of Kupiansk.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited front-line troops in Kupiansk on Tuesday, countering President Vladimir Putin’s recent claim that the city is under Russian control.
Zelensky said he met units engaged in ongoing operations and praised soldiers “destroying the… pic.twitter.com/2JVcSNYYNd
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) December 12, 2025
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Comments
Should I have a problem with this? Seems like we should do the same to Iran.
Iran will collapse on its own. It is running out of water. If we can cause regime change in Venezuela, that will cut off Iran from the 4000 sq mile base there where they grow food among the missiles. The Mullahs will soon be loading planes with loot and flying to France.
It seems like in the meantime we could take their frozen assets and use it to finance counterterrorism efforts that nullify their state sponsored financial backing of Hamas and Hezbollah.
It seems more fitting to have them fund their own demise.
Do we consider those assets to be the property of the Iranian people? If so then freezing and holding them as a practical matter ‘in Escrow’ until a popular govt is returned in a truly free election seems reasonable. Just deciding to take them and spend them ourselves is an option but IMO we shouldn’t kid ourselves, it’s theft and we’d be doing it b/c might makes right. Maybe not the best road to travel b/c whatever comforting reassuring PR/propaganda language is used to tell us we’re doing the right thing it will be viewed by realists around the world for what it is, theft.
Yes and no. When you commit a crime, you are expected to pay restitution. Part of that helps to offset the cost of your prosecution and detention. It doesn’t fully fund but does provide a mitigating offset.
This would be us saying that Iran’s terrorism sponsorship costs us money to counter it and we should recup some of that as restitution for their crimes.
Freezing the funds would deny use which is pretty big penalty. Seizing and spending the assets is another level. Doing that, IMO, crosses a threshold that if I were running a smaller Nation and it happened b/c the UN or EU didn’t like my environmental policy or whatever (and that is the next logical step once this seize and spend for ‘crimes’ idea takes root it’s a short hop to ‘environmental justice’ or ‘trans justice’ or even ‘failure to police free speech’ IAW the EU diktat where today the EU is trying to fine X/Musk) I’d be tempted to respond with asymmetric attacks on the Nations, banks, individuals, entities responsible. Once the assets are stolen and spent they can’t be used as leverage.
As the conflict goes on, the reasons for the conflict morph as the past is forgotten. This war didn’t have to happen. NATO expansion wasn’t needed…by the way… why was NATO formed and why it continued as its opponent disappeared? Russia ran into problems invading Ukraine because its military was configured as defensive and not offensive as the Warsaw Pact was. Who guaranteed the expansion of NATO and promoted Ukraine through color revolution? The US under Clinton, Bush and Obama. Lest we forget the corrupt Ukraine that was turned into the piggy bank for so many politicians. Watch “Ukraine on Fire” with Oliver Stone. No one is clean in this war.
I should have been more clear. I meant should I have a problem with using seized assets to fund Anti Russian war efforts.
Kinda. Whether we believe the seizure was justified or unjustified what the seizure has led to is the infancy of alternative payment/settlement systems by Nations wary that the USA/EU will grab their $ at some future point just because they can. It has injected low trust in not just counter party to the exchange but to the settlement systems themselves. That is gonna have some lasting negative impacts which are still widening.
Tougher to attract international capital and route settlement of international trade through a system in which participating Nations have less than full confidence their $ won’t be seized aka stolen by other Nations. Another angle is this sparked an acceleration in Central Banks reducing their holdings of US $ and US Treasury instruments in favor of holding more gold. The less foreign central banks hold and buy US debt the higher the interest rate the US Treasury must pay to get the same amount of debt accepted by others buyers.
IMO the seizure was dumb b/c it’s kinda a one trick pony and using it on behalf of Ukraine may not have been the best use. Once the trigger is pulled then it is no longer a ‘potential threat’ but becomes a realistic expectation. Nations will and are adjusting their financing and trade settlement participation to minimize exposure to this known threat. 1st rule of ambush is once ID the location of the ambush site, don’t enter it instead avoid it.
Virtually every day yields some new Russian territorial gain. That has been the case for nearly the past two years, but lately the pace of the gains has been accelerating.
The battle plan has been to grind down Ukrainian forces in an intentional meat grinder. With the war losses and those that left Ukraine, Ukraine has been turned into a desert that is beyond the wildest dreams by Stalin.
~7,000,000 million Ukrainians died by Russian-Bolshevik aggression 1917-53.
Ukrainian combat casualties 2014-2025 approx. ~1,200,000.
Of course Ukrainian civilians are leaving the war zone. 1,200,000 women and children fled London by the time of the Blitz. Why should Ukrainian women and children hunker down in some little village 70km east of the Dnieper?
Robert Conrad and Anne Applebaum have great books on the Holodomor. What really stuns me is that the EU is ramping up the war drums. The EU (+USA) got this ball rolling and the EU thinks the US will jump to their rescue. Note the time frame the EU talks about… after the next US presidential elections. Would a Dem prez jump into the war…. you betch’a! Maybe some real Russian collusion may be needed to stop a war…. weird.
“Note the time frame the EU talks about…after the next US presidential elections.”
I wasn’t aware of that, but it sounds like something EU libs would say. Thank you for pointing it out.
How about instead the EU just stop buying Russian oil and gas.
I wouldn’t put it beyond some of those wankers to freeze the assets, then use them to buy Russian oil and gas.
Before Europe seizes any more assets I would suggest they do some cost benefit analysis and ask themselves what a nuclear armed intermediate‑range ballistic missile would cost Russia.
The kinetic version of Russia’s hypersonic rocket pack a suitable punch to leave the nukes for any end game. When the USSR collapsed, cooler heads in the Kremlin didn’t pull the trigger. Pushing Russia into a corner of all or nothing… well…. that’s one way to halt the Islamic takeover of Europe….. no Europe left to take over!
I suppose the 10% for the big guy is out the window now.