Reparações de guerra: o difícil cálculo de quem deve pagar quanto - exemplo da Polônia, nunca ressarcida - Arkadiusz Mularczyk

Quanto os russos deverão pagar aos ucranianos?

A Segunda Guerra Mundial foi a mais devastadora de todas, em vítimas humanas e em destruição material. Praticamente toda a Europa central e oriental, com, poucas exceções, sofreu o peso dos exércitos inimigos, uma devastação raras vezes vista na história da humanidade em tal escala.

Mas, o tirano de Moscou também está devastando a Ucrânia, matando seu povo, sendo o responsável pela fuga de milhões de ucranianos de suas casas.

Quem vai pagar a destruição? A Rússia deveria ser obrigada a fazê-lo, mas será uma longa batalha jurídica. As reservas russas congeladas em cofres ocidentais não cobrirão todas as necessidades, e antes seria preciso calcular exatamente quanto a Rússia deve pagar.

Os poloneses afinaram uma metodologia para isso e seria o caso de os ucranianos se consultarem com essa  organização citada na carta abaixo para começar a calcular a conta para os sucessores do Putin, ou seja, todo o povo russo.

Deve servir para outros conflitos igualmente, inclusive não apenas no plano das guerras desse tipo, mas em caso de criminalidade interna também.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

PS.: Grato a Fernando Werneck pelo envio da Economist.

General Assembly adopts resolution on Russian reparations for Ukraine (14 Nov 2022)

 Esclarecer qual foi a postura adotada pelo Brasil. Provavelmente abstenção (a confirmar).

General Assembly adopts resolution on Russian reparations for Ukraine 

© UNICEF/Anton Kulakowskiy

 

Damaged buildings in Irpin, Ukraine.

Facebook Twitter Print Email

14 November 2022Peace and Security

The UN General Assembly on Monday adopted a resolution that calls for Russia to pay war reparations to Ukraine, as ambassadors met to resume their emergency special session devoted to the conflict. 

Nearly 50 nations co-sponsored the resolution on establishing an international mechanism for compensation for damage, loss and injury, as well as a register to document evidence and claims. 

The General Assembly is the UN’s most representative body, comprising all 193 Member States. 

Ninety-four countries voted in favour of the resolution, and 14 against, while 73 abstained. 

The vote took place in the morning, and countries returned in the afternoon to explain their decisions. 

Ukraine: Hold Russia accountable 

In presenting the resolution, Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya used the biblical adage that “there is nothing new under the sun” as a motif throughout his remarks. 

He insisted that Russia must be held accountable for its violations of international law. 

“Seventy-seven years ago, the Soviet Union demanded and received reparations, calling it a moral right of a country that has suffered war and occupation,” he said.  

“Today, Russia, who claims to be the successor of the 20th century’s tyranny, is doing everything it can to avoid paying the price for its own war and occupation, trying to escape accountability for the crimes it is committing.” 

Carnage and compensation 

Mr. Kyslytsya pointed out that Russia also supported the creation of the UN Compensation Commission (UNCC), established in 1991 following Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait. 

The Commission completed its mandate in February, he reported, having paid out over $52 billion in reparations to victims.

The Ambassador outlined the impact of the Russian war on his country, including bombings targeting residential buildings and infrastructure, the demolition of nearly half of the power grid and utilities, massive displacement, and atrocities such as murder, rape, torture and forced deportations.

“This proposal is not about Russia alone. It will work for the benefit of all those who are being threatened now or might be threatened later by use of force,” he said.

Russia criticizes draft 

Speaking before the vote, Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya characterized the draft resolution as “a classic example” of a narrow group of States acting not on the basis of international law, but rather trying to consecrate something that is illegal.

He said countries backing the resolution were attempting to position the General Assembly as a judicial body, which it is not.

“These countries boast about how committed they are to the rule of law, but at the same time, they are flouting its very semblance,” he added, speaking in Russian.

No role for the UN 

Mr. Nebenzya said the proposed reparations mechanism will be created by a group of countries that will decide how it functions.

“The UN will play no role in this process because the proposed mechanism is suggested to be created outside of the UN, and no one has any plans to account to the General Assembly for its activity,” he continued.

Furthermore, he had “no doubt” that the funding will come from frozen Russian assets, which total billions.

Western countries have long wanted to unfreeze these assets, he said, not to return them to their owner, or to spend them on helping Ukraine, “but rather so as to fund their own constantly growing weapons supplies to Kyiv, and covering the debts for the weapons already supplied.” 

About the emergency special session 

The General Assembly emergency special session began on 28 February, or just days after the start of the war in Ukraine. 

This marks only the 11th time such a meeting has been held since 1950, in line with a resolution widely known as ‘Uniting for Peace’.  

Resolution 377A(V) gives the General Assembly power to take up matters of international peace and security when the Security Council is unable to act due to unanimity among its five permanent members – China, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia – who have the power of veto. 

The current special session was convened after the Council voted in favour of the General Assembly meeting following Russia’s veto of a resolution that would have deplored the assault on Ukraine.  

Agencia Brasil se safa desta por incompetencia alheia

Este resumo não está disponível. Clique aqui para ver a postagem.

Dividas de guerra (da IGM) da Alemanha: fim de uma longa historia

Eu havia acabado de ler o livro de Liaquat Ahamad: Lords of Finance, sobre os banqueiros centrais dos anos 1920 e início dos 30, que provocaram, por ação ou omissão, a terrível depressão -- não a crise, pois esta "independeu" deles -- provocada por políticas erradas. Soube, então, que os pagamentos por reparações deveriam ter ido, se não fosse pela interrupção do Hitler, até os anos 1980, e num esquema de renegociação ulterior, até o ano 2000. Depois tudo ficou parado.
A história completa segue abaixo...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Legacy of Versailles
Germany Closes Book on World War I With Final Reparations Payment
By David Crossland
Der Spiegel, Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Germany will make its last reparations payment for World War I on Oct. 3, settling its outstanding debt from the 1919 Versailles Treaty and quietly closing the final chapter of the conflict that shaped the 20th century.

Oct. 3, the 20th anniversary of German unification, will also mark the completion of the final chapter of World War I with the end of reparations payments 92 years after the country's defeat.
The German government will pay the last instalment of interest on foreign bonds it issued in 1924 and 1930 to raise cash to fulfil the enormous reparations demands the victorious Allies made after World War I.

The reparations bankrupted Germany in the 1920s and the fledgling Nazi party seized on the resulting public resentment against the terms of the Versailles Treaty.

The sum was initially set at 269 billion gold marks, around 96,000 tons of gold, before being reduced to 112 billion gold marks by 1929, payable over a period of 59 years.

Germany suspended annual payments in 1931 during the global financial crisis and Adolf Hitler unsurprisingly declined to resume them when he came to power in 1933.

But in 1953, West Germany agreed at an international conference in London to service its international bond obligations from before World War II. In the years that followed it repaid the principal on the bonds, which had been issued to private and institutional investors in countries including the United States.

Under the terms of the London accord, Germany was allowed to wait until it unified before paying some €125 million in outstanding interest that had accrued on its foreign debt in the years 1945 to 1952. After the Berlin Wall fell and West and East Germany united in 1990, the country dutifully paid that interest off in annual instalments, the last of which comes due on Oct. 3.

"Germany's pre-war foreign debt was paid back by the start of the 1980s, it mainly consisted of foreign bonds. This also applied to the debt of the German Reich, which largely consisted of bonds issued in connection with German reparations debt from World War I," the German Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The Federal Office for Central Services and Unresolved Property Issues, which is in charge of managing outstanding debt, said the payment period covering outstanding interest would expire on Oct. 3.

Hitler Tapped into Sense of Injustice

"It's a historical curiosity that the Versailles Treaty should continue to have a financial impact to this day," Professor Gerd Krumeich, a German historian who has specialized in the World War I, told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

He said Hitler's rise to power had its roots in Germany's deep sense of injustice at the 1919 treaty that gave Germany sole responsibility for the war and forced it to make crippling payments.
"The central factor behind Hitler's seizure of power was his promise 'I'll win this war in the end, I will undo this injustice and tear up this treaty and restore Germany to its old greatness,'" Krumeich said.

"There was tremendous frustration in Germany in the 1920s -- this conflict that cost 2 million lives and left 4 or 5 million wounded is supposed to have been in vain, and it was all our fault? The reparations payments compounded everything. Not only was Germany given the moral blame, it was also supposed to pay an outlandish sum that most people had never even heard of."

France and Britain needed the reparations to repay their own debts. Both countries had borrowed vast sums from the US during the war. Germany only settled about an eighth of its treaty obligations by the time it suspended payments