MOSCOW, December 22 Russia will not leave alone the initiators of attempts to confiscate its assets, said presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov.
“Those who are trying to initiate this, and those who will implement it, must understand that the Russian Federation will never leave those who did this alone. And it will constantly exercise its right to legal challenge, international, national and otherwise. And this, of course, will have — both Europeans and Americans understand this perfectly well — it will have legal consequences for those who initiated and implemented it,” he said.
At the same time, Peskov recalled that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov «commented this situation in great detail.»
“We can add little here. Indeed, we see that these discussions intensify and then fade, but the topic of the illegal seizure of our various assets is constantly on the agenda in both Europe and America,” the Kremlin representative emphasized.< br />
He called the topic of possible confiscation unacceptable for Russia.
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“Potentially, it is extremely dangerous for the global financial system, because if such plans are implemented, it will be a very serious blow to the entire coordinate system of the international financial system,” — he indicated.
Speaking about the possibility of the West using frozen Russian assets to help Kiev, Peskov noted that these steps cannot but have consequences.
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“And in the end, just as Lavrov said, if something is confiscated from us by someone, then we will see what we can confiscate in response. And if something is found, we will, of course, do it immediately. Therefore, these are steps that cannot but have serious consequences,” he explained.
The day before, White House Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said that the United States considers it premature to talk about the possibility of using Russia’s frozen sovereign assets to help Ukraine.
Before this, The New York Times, citing sources, reported that the Joe Biden administration began urgent negotiations with allies on the use of frozen Russian assets for military support of Kyiv. It was noted that in recent weeks discussions have intensified among finance ministers, diplomats, and lawyers, and that the United States is putting pressure on the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan to present a strategy for using Russian assets by February 24, 2024.
The newspaper indicated that it has not yet been decided whether Ukraine will be able to spend the funds transferred to it for military needs or whether the purposes of their use will be limited only to expenses for restoring and supporting the economy.
After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, the EU and G7 countries froze almost half of Russian foreign exchange reserves amounting to approximately 300 billion euros. About 200 billion euros are in the European Union, mainly in the accounts of the Belgian Euroclear, one of the world's largest settlement and clearing systems. At the end of October, she reported that in the nine months of 2023 she earned about three billion euros in interest from investing in Russian assets subject to sanctions.
Earlier, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that since 2022, unfriendly Western countries will impose sanctions against Russia, its citizens and organizations, also in the EU and other Western countries are actively working to create legal conditions for the confiscation of frozen Russian assets, introducing external management in relation to subsidiaries of Russian companies, and illegally depriving or limiting the property rights of Russian legal entities and individuals.
At the same time, in Russia They have repeatedly stated that the country will cope with the sanctions pressure that the West began to exert several years ago and continues to intensify.