We must be bolder in seizing frozen Russian assets, writes the Prime Minister in a Sunday newspaper. ‘That starts with taking the billions in interest these assets are collecting and sending it to Ukraine.’ Can that really be done? Having consulted international legal opinion, here’s my summary.

The principle of ‘sovereign state immunity’ doesn’t prevent the freezing of state assets, but confiscating them would create a very dangerous precedent, namely that no state’s reserves would be secure in anyone else’s banking system.