Name: Keir Starmer tells Roman Abramovich to 'pay up now' or face court | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-12-24T17:06:30.000Z
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The UK government has threatened court action against the former Chelsea owner, Roman Abramovich, unless he donates the funds from the sale of the club to Ukraine.

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Mr. Abramovich was made to sell up when he was sanctioned for his ties to the Kremlin.

But the money, £2.5 billion, remains frozen.

Well, it comes as President Zelenskyy will be in Brussels tomorrow to convince European partners to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, despite reports that Washington is pressurizing EU countries against the plan.

With those lines coming just after the German Chancellor stressed the need for the EU to use Russian frozen assets to raise the pressure on Putin.

We'll have more analysis and all of that.

First, though, our political editor Chris Mason has been speaking to the Foreign Secretary about those threats of legal action against Russia.

Roman Abramovic, Foreign Secretary, what is your message to Roman Abramovich?

Well, the proceeds from the sale of Chelsea Football Club were supposed to be given to humanitarian purposes in Ukraine.

That's what Roman Abramovich committed to.

He now needs to honour that commitment, pay the money.

And if he doesn't, then we will go to court.

But why make a public noise about it now when you could just go to court now?

Well, we've issued this license now, a license that he should have applied to some time ago in order to transfer the money to a charity to humanitarian purposes in Ukraine.

That's why we're issuing the license now.

We're giving him those few months now to honour that, to follow, to use this license to transfer the money so we can get it into Ukraine.

If he doesn't, at that point, we will go to court.

You sound exasperated, let down by all of this.

This has been going on for several years now and there was a commitment made.

And we know that there are veterans, there are children, there are families in Ukraine who really need additional support that this money should be going towards.

And it's not, because we've seen these long delays and the failure to take the steps needed.

We need Roman Abramovich to honour that commitment and.

Given that nothing has happened yet, isn't there every prospect that this does end up in court and gets bogged down for years and years and this money doesn't get to where you want it to get to?

Well, I would really urge Roman Abramovich to just recognize he made a commitment.

That's what happened at the time of the Chelsea sale.

Sounds like acknowledging this could go on for years and years.

I'm urging him not to try and pursue further court action, because actually, what we need to do is, is get this money into Ukraine and for humanitarian purposes, that's where it's needed.

We will be prepared to take court action ourself to make sure.

But isn't the truth of this that you might end up doing that, but

it could still drag on for years and years, and

the consequence of that is that this money won't get to where you want it to get to.

You're perhaps, if not powerless, and there's a limit to what you can do here.

Well, part of the reason for doing this, for setting this license, is so that we can then take this action as swiftly as we possibly can, because we are determined that this money should get to Ukraine.

Well, that was Yvette Cooper talking there to Chris Mason.

Let's talk to our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams.

Paul, give me your assessment of the significance of what the UK Foreign Secretary is doing here and what the UK government is doing.

Well, look, this is a large sum of money.

There's a little bit of a debate about exactly how large.

But, you know, the government is saying 2.5 billion pounds money that.

To help the victims of the war in Ukraine after the money was frozen back in 2022 and after Roman Abramovich was forced to sell Chelsea.

The idea always was that that money would be used for victims of the conflict.

Now, there's been a legal row ever since about whether that should be victims on both sides of the conflict.

I think the government has essentially lost patience, wants to see this money released.

And, of course, it comes at an absolutely crucial time that you were just alluding to in terms of the much bigger question of what to do with upwards of $200 billion of frozen Russian assets.

But in the meantime, the British government is saying here, you know, we are prepared to go to court for this particular sum of money.

It is interesting, given exactly what you're saying, which is this crucial, crucial decision on Russian frozen assets, largely held by Belgium, that gets done tomorrow.

The hours leading up to tomorrow, we've seen a gap between what Chancellor Mertz has been saying should happen and the pressure coming in the exact opposite direction from the Americans.

This is a really complicated and still unresolved issue and I think probably it will not be resolved tomorrow.

There are all sorts of compromises that have been, have been suggested to kind of get around the Belgian objection, which is essentially wanting to make sure that they're not left legally liable in a way that would be much greater than any British liability regarding the 2.5 billion.

So, you know, that is an issue where there have been long standing weeks, long months, long efforts to try and tell the Belgians, look, we've got your back here.

Ukraine's major allies want to use this money.

They want it to go to help Ukraine, which is running out of money fast, really needs it before the spring of next year.

But then you have pressure coming, as you say, from the other direction.

Now, we haven't heard this directly from the Americans, but

the Ukrainians are saying today that the US is pressuring the EU not to use frozen Russian assets.

Because under their own 28 point plan that was leaked, what, two or three weeks ago now, that money was going to go to a kind of reconstruction proposal for Ukraine, half the proceeds of which would end up going back to the us so the idea that the US would not profit from this may well be something that Washington views with, with, with some misgivings, to say the least.

And I suppose to underline the importance of tomorrow and that gathering.

I've been reporting what President Zelensky has been saying in the last half an hour and I just go through for any of the viewers missing, that he has said that Moscow shows it's clearly readying for a war.

He then says Russia will undermine the diplomatic efforts to end this war.

In says the US wants to end the war, but Moscow is sending the opposite signals.

And he counts on the courage of its allies to stand against Russia.

And I suppose aside from that whole area of frozen assets, he is being pressurized to sign up to a deal before Christmas.

But in effect he's saying, hang on, it can't be any sort of deal.

Yeah, I mean, the pressure is enormous and, and

you know, when you talk to Western officials, I had a couple of conversations in the last few, few days and they really do believe that we are at an absolutely critical phase now and the deal is possible.

But they always come back to this issue, which is that Russia has not yet shown that it is willing to make the kind of concessions that, that Ukraine's allies believe it should make.

So at the moment we're still, you know, we have this odd dichotomy between a deal that seems to be coming taking shape, particularly by the way, with regard to security guarantees.

And it does seem as though there has been significant progress on offering Ukraine proper security guarantees in the recent discussions.

But at the same time, the sense that Vladimir Putin is still where he is always been when it comes to Ukraine and the Ukrainians pointing out that Russia's defense spending plans for the coming year are colossal, there's no indication of them winding down their war.

They, they want us to believe that Russia has wider ambitions.

So, yeah, we're obviously at a, at a crunch moment both in terms of the negotiations on security guarantees, territory which remains the major sticking point, and

Well, Paul, that sets up of course tomorrow very, very neatly in your end thoughts there.

So of course, we'll have continuous live coverage from Brussels tomorrow with when that gathering actually starts.

Paul, thank you for going through all of that.