West wavers on Ukraine proposals to seize Russian assets as reparations

Exclusive: Ukraine lobbying UN and allies to clear legal path for extracting Russian compensation for war damage

Ukraine is facing a battle to persuade its western allies, including the UK, to back its proposal for any peace settlement with Moscow to include multibillion reparations by Russia, in part using seized Russian state and oligarch assets.

Ukraine is lobbying the UN general assembly to adopt a resolution that will become the basis for the creation of an international compensation mechanism that could lead to the seizure of as much as $300bn (260bn) of Russian state assets overseas.