State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin warned on Sunday that Russia will confiscate the assets of enemy countries if the European Union channels profits from Russian assets frozen under war sanctions to rebuild Ukraine.
“Such a decision will require a symmetrical response from Russia. In this case, many more assets of enemy countries will be seized than our resources frozen on European soil.”Volodin said on his Telegram account.
Volodin accused European representatives, such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, of trying to maintain their positions at all costs with such measures.
“Based on the bad financial situation their countries have led to, they started talking again about stealing our country’s frozen resources to continue, at their own expense, the militarization of Kiev.” he claimed.
Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday that she will “present a proposal to find a way to use the income from these assets that currently benefit a limited number of financial institutions in the European Union”.
“These windfalls are already quite substantial. The idea is to bundle them and channel them ‘en bloc’ through the European Union budget for Ukraine and the reconstruction of the country.” Von der Leyen explained.
And he added: “the value of these sovereign assets amounts to 211 billion euros. Politically, we agree that Russia must ultimately pay for the long-term reconstruction of Ukraine.”
Russian authorities have already classified as “theft” the decision of the United States of America to allocate $5.4 million in frozen assets to Russian oligarchs in support of Ukrainian veterans.
The European Union has frozen around 19 billion euros to Russian oligarchs in the first months of the military operation that Russia launched in Ukraine in February 2022.
In addition, the West has blocked a total of $300 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves from the Central Bank of Russia.
Source: DN
