On Thursday, G7 leaders agreed to a plan that would use investment returns on frozen Russian assets to fund loans to Ukraine.

Here’s how it’ll work. The US and its allies will extend to Kyiv a $50 billion loan with the money earmarked for the purchase of weapons and infrastructure. The loan will be repaid from interest generated by more than a quarter trillion of frozen Russian assets which, for the most part, are sitting in European banks. The US will underwrite the loan.

While perusing finance-focused social media (i.e., “X”), I noticed quite a bit of hand-wringing at the purported “injustice” of this arrangement — the alleged “unfairness” of using interest earned on Russian assets to purchase weapons which’ll be used to kill Russians. And so on. In light of such commentary, I felt compelled to weigh in.

A lot of “finance folks” (a nebulous catch-all for the motley collection of voices which together comprise the discordant macro-market symphony) feign something like righteous indignation at the seizure of Vladimir Putin’s G7 claims and other Kremlin assets.

I don’t know why. Actually, I do know why. Or at least one reason why. Over the last decade or so, too many Westerners have developed an affinity for Putin, who they imagine is the kind of guy you’d shoot vodka with on a fun hunting expedition in Siberia. Which is to say Westerners know as much about Putin as they do about everything else — so, next to nothing.

Putin’s a murderer. He blew up hundreds of innocent Russians in Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in 1999 to advance his own political career, he’s killed scores of dissidents both at home and abroad over a quarter century in power and — spoiler alert — he’d put your brains on the nearest wall if he thought he could benefit from it. I’d tell you to ask Anna Politkovskaya about that latter bit, but she’s in a meeting with Alexei Navalny.

I’m quite sure Putin’s fan base in the West doesn’t understand that or, more the point, hasn’t truly internalized it. White American men tend to fancy themselves a race of Rambos. They have big pickup trucks, lots of guns, large knives and even compound bows. Therefore… I don’t know, actually. I’m not sure what comes after “therefore.” A looped video of a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick maybe. The mindset among white, male American MAGA-philes seems to be this: “We can admire Putin — and other dictators besides — because he wouldn’t do any of that to us, by God.”

But that’s wrong. He surely would. It’s not a machismo contest. Putin’s macho act is a cover story for psychopathy. He’s not going to arm wrestle you to settle a dispute. You’re just going to wake up in the middle of the night to find your wife and children bound and executed on the living room floor, and there he’ll be, sitting quietly on the couch with gloves and a silenced pistol. That’s when the Rambo act stops and the begging starts.

That’s the reality behind the silly memes depicting Putin riding various kinds of apex predators and prehistoric lizards. You laugh (I sometimes do too), but there’s nothing funny about the man. I don’t care who you are — baddest man in the Tennessee boondocks, tough-talkin’ Texas ranger or Navy SEAL — your disposition isn’t Putin’s. Those eyes are completely empty. There’s nothing there. Just blackness.

But it’s not just an inability to come to terms with the deranged reality of the man that prompts some observers to chafe at the seizure of his assets. There’s also something unnerving, many contend, about the idea that G7 nations can simply commandeer another country’s reserves, irrespective of the excuse. In other words: Sure, maybe Putin deserved to have his assets frozen, but this is a slippery slope. Who’s to say the excuses don’t get flimsier from here? Might the US and the EU freeze some of China’s assets merely for rehearsing an invasion of Taiwan? Or for cracking down further on whatever’s left of Hong Kong’s democracy? Would the US freeze Saudi dollars if Riyadh sells oil to China in yuan? And on and on.

There’s some validity to those concerns, but I’ll admit to being a bit confused. What happened to realpolitik? Why shouldn’t the West deploy its most potent non-nuclear weapon (i.e., the dollar- and euro-based financial system) in the fight to protect its eastern frontier against a Russian invasion? Russia weaponized gas flows, after all. Putin gets to rape and pillage in Ukraine and then cry foul because his G7 claims were frozen? How much sense does that make? Too bad so sad, Vlad. It’s a cold world out there, and nobody knows that better than the Kremlin.

Besides, Putin could’ve bought yuan assets with his dollar and euro proceeds from gas sales. Or hoarded more physical gold. And Bitcoin’s been around for a decade. Nobody made him buy G7 bonds or any other “inside” money, for that matter. You could fairly suggest that’s as absurd as saying nobody’s “making” American consumers hold dollars (i.e., it’s not actually a “choice” in any real sense of the word), but it is what it is: The world’s dollar-based. That’s just how it turned out.

Importantly, nobody’s stopping Russia and the rest of the BRICS from changing the world in that regard. If “BRICS coin” is such a viable project and everybody’s just clamoring for it (which is what you’d sometimes be inclined to believe if you get your news from Elon Musk’s “X”), then where the hell is it? What’s the hold up? Launch it. Let’s see the proof. Or even just a proof of concept. So far, nothing. Or next to nothing, anyway.

Finally, don’t let it be lost on you that the West doesn’t want to freeze out everyday Russians. The fact is, Putin has commandeered the country’s wealth for himself and a constellation of beholden oligarchs. Putin’s Russia is the single most egregious example of a kleptocracy in modern world history. I can assure you that in the event of Putin’s demise and the establishment of anything that even looks like representative government, those assets would be unfrozen and returned to their rightful owners: The Russian people.