MOSCOW, December 29 Russia has a list of assets that can be seized from foreigners in response to their actions, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said .
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"Understanding the complete unpredictability of our counterparties, their tendency to violate international law and other laws, including their own national ones, understanding their tendency to self-destruction, I mean the destruction of the modern economic system, undermining trust in the basic postulates of the world economic system, I mean the main reserve currency, the principle of inviolability of property and so on, we analyzed possible retaliatory steps in advance and will do everything so that it best suits our interests,” he said.
The Kremlin representative stressed that the boomerang effect of sanctions against Moscow is obvious, many foreigners have begun to think about it.
“Such actions in terms of the volume of theft of our assets will have more harmful consequences,” Peskov added.
On Thursday, the Financial Times, citing sources, reported that Germany, France, Italy and the EU doubted the US plans to confiscate $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, considering it necessary to first carefully assess the legality of such a measure.
On Last week, White House Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said Washington believes it is premature to talk about the possibility of using frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine.
The European Central Bank previously warned that Europe's use of frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine could pose reputational risks for the European currency in the long term. They called on Brussels to “look beyond this separate conflict” and look for other ways to finance Ukraine.
The Kremlin stated that the adoption of such decisions “would be another step in violating all the rules and norms of international law.” The Foreign Ministry called the freezing of Russian assets in Europe theft, noting that the EU is targeting not just the funds of private individuals, but also state assets.
After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, the EU and the G7 countries froze almost half of Russian foreign exchange reserves worth 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 sanctioned Russian assets.