The Russian authorities will consider possible options for restoring access to frozen Russian assets. This was stated on February 17 by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, during a briefing.
“The Russian authorities are considering all possible legal mechanisms to return access to Russian foreign assets,” she said.
Zakharova also noted that the reluctance of unfriendly countries to interact with Russia in the legal field indicates the dependence of the status of sovereign assets of European states on the opportunistic geopolitical approach of several Western countries.
On February 15, Daphne Rand, director of the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance, announced that the United States would continue to seize Russian assets and was already planning how to use them to help Ukraine.
On the same day, Alexei Chepa, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, expressed the opinion that the West wants to expropriate Russian assets, and not transfer them to Ukraine. According to the deputy, he saw similar proposals 10 years ago, when in Europe they planned to appropriate the money of Russian and Chinese entrepreneurs.
Prior to this, on February 10, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said that Kyiv would sell at auctions the assets confiscated in the country, owned by Russia and Russian companies.
In turn, Zakharova on February 13 indicated that the Kiev regime was carrying out open robbery, adopting a decree regulating the sale of assets confiscated in the country. She stressed that Nazi Germany actively robbed and took away other people’s property and wealth in Europe and the USSR, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky does the same.
Western countries have frozen the assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation for €300 billion, as well as about €19 billion belonging to Russian businessmen.
Sanctions pressure on Russia was intensified after the start of a special military operation to protect the population of Donbass on February 24. Soon the European Union approved the decision to freeze the assets of the Central Bank.
