Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called for the U.S. and European Union to form a plan to seize or leverage Russian assets to offset Ukraine’s costs in fending off Russia’s invasion.

The U.S. and E.U. have access to about $280 billion worth of frozen Russian assets that Yellen and other officials hope to tap for Ukraine’s benefit. In remarks planned to be delivered in a speech in Frankfurt, Germany, on Tuesday, Yellen called for greater cooperation between the U.S. and E.U. to tap those resources, according to excerpts of Yellen’s speech viewed by Bloomberg.

“It’s vital and urgent that we collectively find a way forward to unlock the value of Russian sovereign assets immobilized in our jurisdictions for the benefit of Ukraine,” Yellen’s remarks said, according to Bloomberg.

The Treasury secretary also called for continued aid to Ukraine.

“It’s also critical that we ensure Ukraine has the support it needs to equip its military, fund critical services, and ultimately rebuild in the medium- to long-term,” the speech continued.

The proposal to seize Russian assets to offset the cost of the war for Ukraine has earned critics in the West who are concerned that such a move would destabilize international financial markets. If the risk to foreign assets held in the U.S. or Europe becomes too great, countries may move to reduce or eliminate their exposure to such recriminations from Western governments. The result would be a much more fragmentary global financial system.

Ukraine has lost ground recently to a renewed Russian offensive in the eastern part of the country. Russia has surged troops into the region, especially in the northeast near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city behind Kyiv.

Ukraine’s military has struggled to hold ground as it runs low on munitions, supplies, and soldiers.

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“The situation is on the edge,” Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, told The New York Times last week. “Every hour this situation moves toward critical.”

Budanov delivered his assessment of the situation from a bunker in Kharkiv. He said that the Ukrainian military lines are strained from a lack of troops.

“All of our forces are either here or in Chasiv Yar,” he added, referring to a Ukrainian stronghold about 120 miles to the south of the city, also under threat from Russian forces. “I’ve used everything we have. Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone else in the reserves.”

President Joe Biden signed legislation for the U.S. to provide Ukraine with about $60 billion more in military aid last month.

On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency issued an enforcement alert warning of cyberattacks on community drinking water systems across the nation.

The EPA stated that its inspections found that over 70% of water systems did not “fully comply with requirements in the Safe Drinking Water Act and that some of those systems have critical cybersecurity vulnerabilities.” The EPA noted that default passwords have not been updated and single logins being used leave the systems vulnerable. It also suggested system operators reduce exposure to public-facing internet, conduct regular cybersecurity assessments, change default passwords immediately, and conduct an inventory of OT/IT assets, among other tasks.

“In many cases, systems are not doing what they are supposed to be doing, which is to have completed a risk assessment of their vulnerabilities that includes cybersecurity and to make sure that plan is available and informing the way they do business,” said EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe, the Associated Press reported.

McCabe said China, Russia and Iran are “actively seeking the capability to disable U.S. critical infrastructure, including water and wastewater.”

In May 2023, Microsoft reported that state-backed Chinese hackers called Volt Typhoon were targeting infrastructure systems in the United States. Those attempts included drinking water, AP noted.  In November 2023, The Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa said one of their booster stations had been hacked by a cyber-group calling itself Cyber Av3ngers that was backed by Iran.

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Last month, a Russian hacktivist group hacked into a Texas town’s water system.  “There were 37,000 attempts in four days to log into our firewall,” said Mike Cypert, city manager of Hale Center.

“By working behind the scenes with these hacktivist groups, now these (nation states) have plausible deniability and they can let these groups carry out destructive attacks. And that to me is a game-changer,” Dawn Cappelli, a cybersecurity expert, stated.

“In an ideal world … we would like everybody to have a baseline level of cybersecurity and be able to confirm that they have that,” Alan Roberson, executive director of the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators, said. “But that’s a long ways away.”