MOSCOW, January 11 US support for the seizure of Russian assets will set up their European partners, who have become hostages of Washington's American Russophobia, said the head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs and Chairman of the LDPR Leonid Slutsky.
Bloomberg, citing sources, reported that the White House supports the bill on the confiscation of frozen assets of the Russian Federation and intends to coordinate actions with other G7 countries in order, in particular, to reduce the risk of undermining confidence in the United States on the part of foreign investors. Earlier, the Washington Post, citing an official in the Biden Administration, reported that Washington would not be able to implement a scheme to use frozen assets of the Russian Federation to help Kiev without the consent of European countries, since “about two percent of these funds are stored in the United States, most of Russia’s frozen assets are located in Belgium and Switzerland.»
“If Bloomberg’s sources are correct, then the White House is playing a very dangerous game. And if suddenly the direct plunder of frozen Russian reserves is actually legalized at the legislative level, this step will have the most negative consequences… Washington, as always, will set up European partners who have long been hostages American Russophobia… Thanks to the dictatorship of sanctions, the United States has already actually deprived Europe of cheap Russian gas, hooking its LNG on the needle. Now the financial and investment markets are under threat,» Slutsky said.
He also noted that Russia will respond symmetrically and immediately.
“Let them first calculate the amount of remaining Western assets on the territory of our country… The confiscation of Russian funds, as has already been said more than once, will undermine confidence in the West on the part of investors from Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and all other states of the “global majority” and will provoke an even greater outflow of capital from the Old (to a greater extent) and New World,» Slutsky added.
After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, the EU and G7 countries froze almost half of Russian foreign exchange reserves amounting to about 300 billion euros. About 200 billion euros are in the EU, mainly in the accounts of the Belgian Euroclear — one of the world's largest settlement and clearing systems. At the end of October, the international depository Euroclear reported that in the nine months of 2023 it earned about 3 billion euros in interest on investing in sanctioned Russian assets.
The Kremlin stated that making such decisions “would be another step in violating all the rules and norms of international law.” The Russian 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 the state assets of Russia.
Earlier, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that from 2022, unfriendly Western countries will impose sanctions against Russia, its citizens and organizations, and 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, the property rights of Russian legal entities and individuals are illegally deprived or limited.