‘Immense frustration’ over delays releasing Chelsea Ukraine cash, says minister

The UK Government has expressed “immense frustration” over delays in releasing funds from the sale of Chelsea Football Club to help Ukraine war victims.

Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said the Government was doing “everything we can within significant and irritating levels of difficulty” to get the money deployed.

Roman Abramovich sold Chelsea after he was sanctioned as part of the UK’s efforts to target Russian oligarchs following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Mr Abramovich pledged to divert all proceeds to a foundation to benefit victims of the war.

The Premier League club was sold in May 2022 for £2.5 billion – then the highest price paid for a sports team – although the House of Lords European Affairs Committee last month reported the cash was frozen in a UK bank account amid “disagreement” about where it should be spent.

Speaking in the Commons during a statement on Ukraine, SNP foreign affairs spokesman Brendan O’Hara pressed the Government to explain what was happening with frozen Russian assets – including the Chelsea sale proceeds that “sit in a London bank”.

Mr Mitchell replied: “There is immense frustration that the Chelsea fund isn’t out and operating at this time.

“We are doing everything we can within significant and irritating levels of difficulty to get it deployed and we will do that as fast as we possibly can.”

Earlier, Mr Mitchell told MPs that ensuring Ukraine’s success against Russia was “the biggest test of our generation”.

He told the Commons: “It speaks volumes about this neo-imperialist bully that (Russian president Vladimir Putin) still stubbornly continues despite the cost to Ukraine and his own people.

“In recent months, Putin sent around 50,000 young Russians to their deaths, to take Avdiivka, a town whose pre-war population was just 35,000. We must, and will, ensure he fails, for this is the biggest test of our generation.”

Elsewhere in exchanges on the statement, Mr Mitchell dismissed suggestions that western countries may put boots on the ground in Ukraine.

Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) said it was “notable how swiftly” Downing Street played down French president Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that Nato troops could be directly deployed to the war-ravaged country.

He asked: “Could this be used to demonstrate how vacillation in Washington will lead to escalation in Europe and could the European members of Nato also perhaps explore some kind of lend-lease arrangement with the United States, as we had in the 1939/40 period?”

Mr Mitchell replied: “In what he says he is right, that we need to stretch every sinew in ensuring we give as much support as we possibly can in the way that he suggests.

“But I must re-echo the words of the Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg yesterday when he said there are no plans for Nato combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.”

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has been struggling to convince Republicans in Washington to facilitate a major United States funding package for Kyiv, with Labour former minister Sir Ben Bradshaw blaming supporters of Donald Trump.

Sir Ben added: “Self-preening British politicians who fawn at Trump do nothing but give succour to Putin and his murderous regime.”

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Richard Foord raised concerns about UK-exported equipment ending up in Russia, such as drones sent to Armenia and Uzbekistan.

He said: “What more will the Government do to keep dual-use goods from ending up in the occupied oblasts of Ukraine given that end-user declarations are plainly not sufficient?”

Mr Mitchell, in his reply, said: “The point he makes underlines the importance of moving sanctions along all the time to take account of things we discover that are happening, clever ways of breaching sanctions, closing down loopholes.

“That is very much what we’re doing. We’re seeking to introduce powers to sanction individual ships and we know that companies are involved in circumventing western sanctions and we take steps all the time to close down those loopholes and we will continue to do so.”

Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy urged the Government to turn “rhetoric on seizure into action” in relation to frozen Russian assets and welcomed the Government highlighting the case of jailed Russian-British journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Mr Mitchell said Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron will meet Mr Kara-Murza’s wife and mother on Friday to “express our solidarity and support”.