Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov assured on Thursday that Moscow will give an “absolutely symmetrical” response to the seizure of its assets in Europe, after Brussels admitted on Monday to seizing more Russian assets.
“If this decision is adopted, there will be an absolutely symmetrical response from the Russian Federation,” the official said, speaking to state television channel Rossía-24.
According to the minister, Russia has sufficient frozen European assets to give the response an identical dimension.
The European assets at stake include bank accounts, dividends and liabilities of “foreign counter-agents from hostile countries,” Siluanov said.
‘All this is frozen. The profits generated by these resources [pela Rússia, caso sejam confiscados] are important and can be used if the decision is made by our hostile partners”threatened the minister.
The European Union on Monday announced the twelfth package of sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, adding that it was evaluating the possibility of using revenue from frozen Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine.
“These extraordinary revenues would already be quite significant. And the idea is to bundle them and then channel them ‘en bloc’ through the EU budget to Ukraine and the reconstruction of Ukraine.”explained the President of the European Commission at the end of October, Ursula von der Leyen.
The sanctions package also includes a ban, from January 1, on the import of diamonds from Russia, which earns around 4.5 billion euros annually from the sale of these gemstones.
The European Union has frozen around 19 billion euros from Russian oligarchs in the first months of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine in February 2022.
In addition, the West has frozen a total of 300 billion dollars (about 275 billion euros) in gold and foreign exchange reserves with the Central Bank of Russia.
On Tuesday, Russia assured that it will use all available means to circumvent sanctions on Russian diamonds, with the spokesperson of the Russian presidency (Kremlin) guaranteeing that the country will “do everything to defend and guarantee Russian interests”.
Source: DN
