Argument: Seizure of Evan Gershkovich Justifies Seizure of Russian Assets
Current Event: Russia will soon secretly try Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich who has been in Lefortovo Prison for over one year.
Argument: The United States should exercise seizure powers against Russian international assets and properties over and above economic sanction seizures for every innocent American Moscow seizes as human leverage with which to negotiate release of one of Moscow’s assassins, spies, active measures, or criminal operatives.
Moscow under Putin has proven its willingness to try to undo justice for and recover degraded, destructive agents of Putin’s gray and irregular warfare such as Viktor Bout, in exchange for relatively harmless civilians it seizes as bargaining chips on trumped-up charges incomparable in seriousness with those for which free nations have evidence against Putin’s agents and assets.
What kind of assets could be seized until innocent Americans like Evan Gershkovich are set free? Anything of value, function, import, and or necessity to the larger state and non-state Putin organization anywhere in the world, to be held in custody until Russia’s criminal seizures of non-criminal Americans ends and said hostages returned safe and sound, to the United States.
The acknowledgement of this right to nation state self-help recovering its kidnapped citizens could help deter and remedy the state terror and or state criminal practice of kidnapping and ransoming of American citizens. It would also put on notice Russians or their agents abroad and in cyberspace that who will likely attempt to move, launder, hide, or use their assets upon awareness of the policy adopted by the United States, perhaps aiding detection of more assets to target.
Rewards might even be offered to those with confirmable information about laundered Russian assets or instrumentalities that could be seized.
In such cases, the assets, while held, could be used to generate income and meet needs of Ukraine, Israel, Libya, and refugee populations suffering from Russian destabilization operations until such time as Moscow turns over its wrongfully seized American citizens.
