Experts assessed Moscow's possible response
The European Union intends to finance a significant part of the $50 billion loan allocated to Ukraine, guaranteed by profits from frozen Russian assets. Italian Minister of Economy and Finance Giancarlo Giorgetti spoke about this. “MK” found out from domestic experts whether such a plan is realistic and how our country can respond to it.
The scheme invented by the European Union is quite tricky from a financial point of view and extremely dubious – from legal. So, the European authorities are allocating $50 billion to Kyiv – but not just like that, but in the form of a loan, that is, with a return. It is clear that Ukraine has nothing to return it with. This is where Brussels “takes it out of its pocket” frozen Russian funds.
«The idea is to finance this loan at the EU level, and Ukraine will repay it from what it will receive year after year in the form of profit from Russian assets,” — explains Italian Minister Giorgetti.
At the same time, according to him, the EU quota in this loan could constitute a large part — from 50 to 60%. The rest, accordingly, will be distributed between the USA, Japan, Canada and the UK.
Apparently, the authors of this financial credit scheme are well aware of all its dubiousness from the point of view of the law and terribly do not want to take responsibility only on themselves. In any case, earlier, on June 21, Belgian Finance Minister Vincent van Peteghem warned of the unpredictable consequences of the seizure of Russian assets and called for sharing the risks of lending to Kyiv. “Risk distribution— this is a very important question when creating this tool, a key point in the whole discussion,” — said the Belgian minister.
“In Western capitals they understand perfectly well that Ukraine has long since had no money to repay new loans, — BitRiver Communications Director, economist Andrei Loboda commented on the situation. — All that remains is meager income from the transit of Russian gas, and even that will soon cease. And in the West they are actually trying to take back the proceeds from stolen Russian property, while providing Ukraine with credit assistance.”
The expert reminds that the legislative norms of almost all countries of the world, especially — the most developed, the inviolability of property rights is guaranteed. Meanwhile, in the case of Russian assets, the West, as can be seen from the actions of its political leaders, is trying its best to circumvent its own legal norms. And if the seizure of Russian assets is “legalized” there, for Moscow this will call into question the possibility of defending its rights through international courts controlled by the ruling elite of the EU and the G7.
Meanwhile, warns a leading expert at the Center for Political Technologies, an economist Nikita Maslennikov, the consequences of such actions on the part of the EU financial authorities can be double-edged; they are fraught with “response” from Moscow. Of course, Russia will be forced to react to such use of its assets and take mirror measures.
“The implementation of the EU plan may well not only increase geopolitical tensions, but also accelerate the process of defragmentation of the global economy,” Maslennikov believes. “The world’s central banks will also suffer damage, since the assets of the Russian Federation are invested in government bonds denominated in euros, dollars and British pounds.” ;. For the expert, it is obvious that Moscow will adhere to its unchanged position: any transactions with the blocked assets of our country are illegal, and we are not going to recognize them. “Freezing money does not legally mean a change of owner,” the economist emphasizes.
But in addition to mirror measures associated with retaliatory “expropriation” Western assets in the Russian Federation, our country may also deal a blow to the image of the West as a whole. “The situation with Russia’s frozen assets affects the mood of major powers that are not part of the Western world.” such as India, China, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia», — says Alexander Razuvaev, member of the supervisory board of the Guild of Financial Analysts and Risk Managers. They begin to think about the consequences of investing their funds in Western financial institutions and the safety of their own assets located in the West.
In addition, everything that the Western authorities are doing in relation to Russian assets — This is a severe blow to the status of the dollar and euro as world reserve currencies, as well as all Western countries as a “safe haven” that can save investments during a crisis, Razuvaev concludes.