MOSCOW, April 3 Representatives of the PRC, Saudi Arabia Arabia and Indonesia are privately calling on the EU not to support the idea of confiscating frozen Russian assets, Politico reports, citing officials, adding that in any case these plans are “shelved.”
«Representatives of China, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are privately calling on the EU to continue to resist pressure from the US and Britain to force the confiscation of more than 200 billion euros of Russian state assets,» the publication said, citing officials.
Those countries fear the confiscation will set a precedent, one official said. According to the newspaper, they may also act “on behalf of” Moscow, in particular because they do not want the EU to help Ukraine on the battlefield.
However, the publication notes, any plan to confiscate Russian assets in Europe and use them to help Kyiv has been “shelved.”
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. The EU is discussing ways to use frozen assets of the Russian Federation to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine. The European Central Bank warned that this could pose reputational risks for the European currency in the long term, and called for “looking beyond this isolated conflict” and looking for other ways to finance Kyiv.
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 since 2022, unfriendly Western countries have been imposing 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 control over subsidiaries of Russian companies, the property rights of Russian legal entities and individuals are illegally deprived or limited.
Russia will be responsible in case of confiscation of frozen Russian assets in the West, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later said. He added that the Russian Federation “also has the opportunity not to return those funds that Western countries kept in Russia and which were frozen in response to the arrest of Russian state reserves; there can be no doubt that we will act mutually.”
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