MOSCOW, December 22 Germany and Western countries against the backdrop of Ukraine’s modest successes at the front, they are less willing to spend their money on it, so they are thinking about confiscating Russian assets, said Artem Sokolov, a researcher at the Center for European Studies at the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO.
It was previously reported that the German Prosecutor General's Office filed a petition with the court to confiscate the assets of a certain «Russian financial institution» in the amount of more than 720 million euros as part of suspicions of allegedly violating the embargo, which is contrary to the Law on Foreign Trade and Payments. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commented on the petition: he called the German authorities a “thieving people” and said that Russia has something to confiscate from Berlin in response.
“The desire of the German side to launch a trial balloon towards the confiscation of Russian assets corresponds to the general desire of the West to use Russian assets to support Kiev. Supporting it in the same volume as before is already more difficult, since there are other goals and objectives. «There are some, but the tranches allocated for this year implied a different result at the front than what was achieved by Kiev during the so-called counter-offensive. Hence the desire to finance at someone else's expense,» Sokolov said.
He emphasized that in addition to this, the United States is putting pressure on European countries, demanding that Russian assets be sent to support Kyiv.
“But it is obvious that Russia’s response will follow immediately, and there is something to confiscate from German assets here. Therefore, the question of the real fate of the petition remains open,” the expert concluded.