Laughing into oblivion
The leaders of the European Union are meeting to divert Russian state assets as collateral for reckless loans to Ukraine. A high-risk gamble by the Eurocracy. A viewpoint by Hermann Ploppa
December 18, 2025 by WS. Reading time: 8 minutes.Press
This article first appeared on Apolut. Transition News was permitted to reprint it with the kind permission of the author.
Today and tomorrow, the heads of state and government of the European Union are meeting in the so-called European Council. The assembly is of a high caliber, because the stakes are incredibly high. The leaders are determined to push through the rescue of the completely insolvent Ukraine at all costs. The political representatives of the European Union are thus risking their own political survival. And it looks very much as if this gamble is headed straight for a major embarrassment. But one thing at a time.
The International Monetary Fund had already determined last summer that Ukraine's state budget would be short approximately €165 billion over the next two years. From April of next year alone, the IMF estimates that Ukraine's budget deficit will reach €71.7 billion (1).
That's too much for a beleaguered state like Ukraine. If this happens, state services would have to be completely cut off. Nothing less than the insolvency of the Ukrainian state is on the agenda. And that means the abrupt end of all the delusional daydreams of Western European war politicians.
The IMF, due to its own constitution, finds itself unable to conjure up the targeted 165 billion euros. Even the IMF must have a prospect of recovering the loaned money. With a collapsed, failed state like Ukraine, this is simply impossible. The IMF knows: the money would be irretrievably lost. Such a total write-off could drag the entire financial sector into the abyss. So: volunteers, step forward!
The International Monetary Fund is therefore unavailable to bail out the post-mortem Ukraine. This is why the European Union is searching for new, extremely audacious methods. One possibility would be to access the Russian credits held at the Brussels clearinghouse Euroclear. And with this, the warmongers at the top of the EU hierarchy have unwittingly shone a public spotlight on one of the most secretive institutions in the Western financial world.
Who even knew about the so-called clearing houses in international finance? Until now, practically no one. There are two leading clearing houses in Europe: Euroclear in Brussels and Clearstream in Luxembourg.
Clearing houses do not deal with assets. Rather, clearing houses could be roughly described as the notaries of the international financial world (2). In the past, when the owner of a valuable item changed through sale, the item was actually transported from the seller's location to the buyer's location.
This was laborious, sometimes attracted attention , and took a comparatively long time. With the advent of the internet age, the idea arose to establish clearinghouses that legally certified the ownership status for all participants. The valuable item remains where it is, but changes hands. This had practical advantages.
The disadvantage: If ownership status can change in a flash, within seconds, then oversight of transactions becomes significantly more difficult. Clearing makes it possible to cleverly mix income from honest work with proceeds from organized crime and to cover one's tracks with lightning speed. Tax evasion is also dramatically simplified by the lightning-fast technology of clearing. The risk potential of clearing urgently needs to be addressed.
Back to Euroclear: Euroclear is a private institution. Euroclear manages exclusively securities, primarily stocks and government-backed bonds. The government raises money in this way and commits to repaying the bonds. The national central bank, incidentally, steers the economy through the strategic issuance or purchase of government securities.
When trade and commerce between Russia and Western Europe were still relaxed and normal, the Russian central bank used the proceeds from its gas and oil business to buy, for example, German and French government bonds. This provided a reliable return, and the money was invested safely and seemingly crisis-proof until it was needed for further use.
Russia's assets held at Euroclear, including interest and compound interest, have now totaled 210 billion euros across Europe and 185 billion euros at Euroclear alone.
But since February 2022, when the war in Ukraine began, these assets have been frozen for political reasons. This was part of the countless sanctions imposed by the European Union against Russia, which was considered the sole aggressor in the Ukraine conflict.
The Eurocrats treated these Russian credits as leverage, hoping to use the money for the reconstruction of Ukraine after a war won against Russia. No one dared to question the fact that this money indisputably belonged to Russia. Confiscating the money was taboo until then. That would have permanently undermined the credibility of the European financial center.
Over the past few years, the maturities of many German and French government bonds have already expired. They were redeemed in cash with interest and compound interest and are now stored in the vaults of the European Central Bank. And because the tide of war simply refuses to turn in Ukraine's favor, Ukraine's funds are becoming increasingly scarce. Like baked goods meant to be eaten at Christmas, the temptation to nibble on some of Russia's assets was considerable.
They quietly dipped into Russia's interest income and transferred it to Ukraine. As early as 2024, €1.55 billion was secretly transferred to the Zelensky government. This year, €2 billion has already been documented. At that time, Belgium, the host of Euroclear, had relatively little objection to these small withdrawals. After all, Belgium collected €1.7 billion from this feat in 2024 as lucrative tax revenue (3).
But now all the curtains are falling away.
This brings us back to where we started. Now that the International Monetary Fund has made it unequivocally clear that Ukraine has become a bottomless pit, the European war-mongers don't want to simply call it quits.
Now the missing money has to come, or the Eurocrats can leave without a trace. But Merz, Macron, and Starmer don't want that. Even these risky players still can't simply confiscate Russia's assets at Euroclear. That would be a breach of international conventions and would likely close many doors to the non-European financial world.
So, these pimps of death are trading in hot air. They want to raise the missing 165 billion euros for Ukraine's refinancing from international banks. The Russian Euroclear balances are to serve as hostages, collateral, or involuntary guarantees. The question immediately arises: Which bank would lend such gigantic sums for "collateral" that cannot be redeemed?
The entire scheme has a third factor in its equation: it is taken for granted that, thanks to the renewed injections of funds, Ukraine will suddenly win the war against Russia. And then, in imagined peace negotiations, Russia will have to sign its Treaty of Versailles. In that treaty, Russia is supposed to acknowledge its sole guilt and then pay reparations to Ukraine.
Ukraine can then use these reparations to pay its creditors. To put it cautiously: the calculations of the EU leaders and the war-mongering European governments are based on several extremely shaky unknowns. The bitter truth about these daydreams is that we, the taxpayers of Europe, will ultimately have to foot the bill.
But hope is on the way…
To secure the necessary approval for this adventurous scheme in the coming days , the Eurocrats are declaring a state of emergency. And in an emergency, such a significant increase in debt for EU citizens does not require the unanimous approval of all 27 EU member states. A so-called "qualified majority" of 15 EU states is sufficient (4).
As is well known, the Belgian government, as host of Euroclear, has raised serious concerns about using Russian assets as collateral for financial aid to Ukraine. This is because the Belgian government would have to instruct Euroclear to encumber the Russian assets accordingly. Not Euroclear, but the Belgian state would be the defendant in the event of international Russian-European legal disputes. Merz will have to have many more working lunches with the Belgian Prime Minister.
But Politico magazine sees other forces at work that could pose a danger to the Eurocratic nightmare (5). Circles within the Trump administration are reportedly actively working to persuade European governments to oppose the new loan scheme. Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are already against it, which is why the Eurocrats want to abandon the principle of unanimity. But now Italy, Malta, and Bulgaria could also oppose the plan.
According to Politico, these intrigues by the Trump administration can be understood as part of the recently published US National Security Strategy: In this strategy paper, the Trump administration openly stated its desire to replace European governments with Trump-compliant ones (6). The outlandish plans of Merz, Macron, and their friends from the Baltic states and Poland now provide the ideal opportunity for the Trumpists to replace this discredited guard.
This aligns with the European Central Bank's recent critical stance towards these risky games. And the analysis firm Fitch already considers Euroclear a candidate for a credit rating downgrade (7). Surely, all of this is not happening without some deeper meaning.
Ms. Weidel can start by taking a closer look at the Chancellery.
Source article: Lachend in den Untergang | Transition News
Sources and notes:
(1) The EU’s problem isn’t Belgium — it’s Trump
(2) Euroclear - Was ist das eigentlich?
(3) Euroclear to transfer another EUR 2B in proceeds …
(4) Russische Zentralbank verklagt belgische …
(5) The EU’s problem isn’t Belgium — it’s Trump
(6) whitehouse.gov/…ploads/2025/12/2025-National- …
(7) reuters.com/…-negative-over-eus-russian-asset- …