MOSCOW, January 25 Russia has everything reasons to respond to Western fraud proportionately and without losses for the state treasury, said the head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky, commenting on the support of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the bill on the transfer of frozen Russian assets to the needs of Ukraine.
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday supported a bill on the transfer of frozen Russian assets to the needs of Ukraine, according to voting results cited by Bloomberg.
“Ostap Bender knew four hundred “ways of taking money”. The collective West is creating another one before our eyes. And at the same time, it does not respect either the law or the right. Russia has every reason to respond to Western fraud proportionately and without losses for the state (treasury — ed.),» he wrote in his Telegram channel.
According to the deputy, with “good intentions” the American senators paved the road to “hell” for the US national economy. “The bill on the confiscation of Russia’s reserves in the amount of $300 billion is a time bomb under the Western investment market. Since its adoption will finally and irrevocably undermine confidence in Washington. And in Brussels, where some members of the European Union are already extending their hands to Russian dividends. How is this This is being done now by Belgium, which has already announced its intention to send 611 million euros to Kyiv this year from the proceeds of frozen Russian funds,” the parliamentarian explained.
After the start of the special operation in Ukraine, Western countries imposed sanctions against the Bank of Russia, freezing its reserves, but the exact volume of immobilized funds is not known. According to the Central Bank at the end of June 2021, about 288 billion dollars were stored in Austria, Britain, Germany, Canada, the USA, France and Japan, and about 63 billion dollars more in unnamed countries. At the beginning of 2022, as the Bank of Russia reported, about half of its $630.6 billion in assets were held in key reserve currencies. According to media reports, Western countries managed to discover about $287 billion in Russian assets.
The Kremlin stated that the adoption of 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, Russian 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.