Lady Astor was the first woman to take a seat in the British House of Commons. In 1933, she was at a cocktail party when someone asked, “Do you know where Hitler was born?” Without missing a beat, she replied, “At Versailles.” Her point was that harsh reparations meted out by the Treaty of Versailles after the first World War led to German resentment and the rise of the demagogue Hitler.
I fear many of my colleagues in the Senate, though well-intentioned, will repeat the same mistake of meting out punishment on Russia without considering the ramifications. The REPO Implementation Act of 2025 creates an actionable framework to seize Russian sovereign assets and provide them to Ukraine.
One can make a good argument for the fairness of making Russia pay for their war of aggression, but first one must consider that these currently frozen funds are an integral part of peace negotiations. Seizing and transferring these assets to Ukraine may make Washington feel virtuous, but if we throw away our own leverage in negotiations by passing this bill, Russia may well decide to just keep fighting this terrible, meat-grinder of a war. In fact, the Trump administration recently warned the European Union not to give frozen Russian funds to Ukraine.
The bill’s proponents claim that Vladimir Putin has refused to engage in serious negotiations to end the war, and therefore more pressure is needed to bring him to the table. What they fail to consider is that the same pressure is likely to drive him even further away from it. What a tragedy it would be if, in our haste, we prolonged this awful war in pursuit of punishing Russia.
Confiscating Russian sovereign assets is essentially an act of economic war and will reinforce the view of hardliners in Moscow that Russia’s war lies not just with Ukraine, but really with the United States and the West. There is no justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but this bill directly undermines President Trump’s noble diplomatic efforts to end the killing there.
Elizabeth Braw, a columnist at Foreign Policy and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, also highlights the risk of blowback to Western companies, writing, “If Western governments themselves begin confiscating assets without due process, they’ll expose Western companies to the caprice of undemocratic regimes.” In fact, Russia has already threatened to seize $288 billion in western assets should the West seize their assets.
The bill also poses a risk to America’s global economic influence. The quality of life we enjoy here in the United States is, in part, thanks to the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. Seizing Russian assets will set a new precedent that will cause other nations to view the U.S. dollar and the American-led economic system as too risky. Instead of dissuading would-be hostile nations from taking action to protect their interests, passage of this bill would incentivize states to simply move their funds out of reach of American influence, or to stand up an alternative financial system.
Washington should not sacrifice its economic power on behalf of a foreign country, nor should it expect to act with impunity when dealing with the world’s largest nuclear power. Congress should support realistic negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and bring stability to Europe. Let’s reject this disastrous bill before we fumble our way into another Versailles.
Rand Paul is a United States Senator from Kentucky.
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