U.S. blueprint to rewire economies of Russia, Ukraine sets off clash with Europe

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The Trump administration in recent weeks has handed its European counterparts a series of documents, each a single page, laying out its vision for the reconstruction of Ukraine and the return of Russia to the global economy. The proposals have sparked an intense battle at the negotiating table between America and its traditional allies in Europe.

The outcome stands to profoundly alter the economic map of the continent. The U.S. blueprint has been spelled out in appendices to current peace proposals that aren’t public but were described to The Wall Street Journal by U.S.

and European officials. The documents detail plans for U.S. financial firms and other businesses to tap roughly $200 billion of frozen Russian assets for projects in Ukraine—including a massive new data center to be powered by a nuclear plant currently occupied by Russian troops.

Another appendix offers America’s broad-strokes vision for bringing Russia’s economy in from the cold, with U.S. companies investing in strategic sectors from rare-earth extraction to drilling for oil in the Arctic, and helping to restore Russian energy flows to Western Europe and the rest of the world. Some European officials who have seen the documents said they weren’t sure whether to take some of the U.S.

proposals seriously. One official compared them to President Trump’s vision of building a Riviera-style development in Gaza. Another, referring to the proposed U.S.-Russia energy deals, said it was an economic version of the 1945 conference where World War II victors divvied up Europe.