The European Union has just agreed to raise €90 billion in joint debt to support Ukraine over the next two years. Yet as Europe settles on the mechanics of this financing, a more fundamental question remains unresolved: where, in this architecture, are the victims of Russia’s crimes?
For months, European leaders framed frozen Russian sovereign assets not merely as a financial lever, but as a tool of accountability. The roughly €210 billion in immobilised Russian central bank assets were repeatedly justified on the basis that Russia had committed aggression and grave violations of international law, and that those assets would remain frozen until Russia compensated for the damage caused. That framing mattered. For the many survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, torture, enforced disappearance, unlawful detention, and forced deportation, the prospect that reparations might be financed from Russian state assets carried profound symbolic and practical weight. It represented a tangible link between harm and responsibility, especially given that many victims will never receive the day in court they are due.
The EU has now opted for a different route: a joint-bond loan backed by the EU budget, with Russian assets remaining frozen but unused. Ukraine will only be expected to repay the loan if it ultimately receives reparations from Russia. This may be a pragmatic compromise. But pragmatism cannot come at the cost of erasing victims from the picture altogether. What is striking is not the choice of instrument, but the silence around victims and survivors that has accompanied it. The debate has been dominated by concerns about legal exposure, financial risk, and debt sustainability, while the individuals whose suffering underpins both the sanctions regime and the rhetoric of ‘support to Ukraine’ have largely disappeared from view.
Reparations are not symbolic gestures. They are a right under international law, and encompass compensation, medical and psychosocial care, education and livelihood support, and measures of rehabilitation and acknowledgment. In Ukraine, survivors continue to live with untreated trauma, disability, stigma, and economic exclusion. These harms will not be resolved by macro-financial stabilisation or defence spending alone.
More than fifty civil society organisations had previously called on the EU to earmark a share of its proposed asset-backed loan for domestic reparations programmes. That same principle should now apply to any financing mechanism the EU chooses. Even a modest allocation – for example between two and five percent of the €90 billion facility – would be transformative. It could enable Ukraine to implement their Bardina Law for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, and to extend interim reparations, using the same survivor-centred principles, to victims of torture, enforced disappearance, and unlawful detention. There is a compelling economic case for doing this. Untreated trauma, disability, and social exclusion erode human capital and become long-term economic and security liabilities. Evidence from other post-conflict contexts shows that reparations strengthen health, education, productivity, and social cohesion in ways that reinforce, rather than compete with, reconstruction and security objectives.
Europe can choose different financing tools. But whichever mechanism it uses, one principle must remain non-negotiable: victims and survivors of Russia’s crimes can no longer be an afterthought.