Moscow, July 23
Russia will retaliate against the West over its expropriation of the country's sovereign assets, and the response could be "harsh", top officials said on Tuesday.
In the wake of the EU announcing that it will start sending the interest earned on frozen Russian assets to Ukraine in the coming weeks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov asserted that Moscow will launch legal proceedings against entities involved in the "theft" of some 260 billion euros ($282 billion) of Russian assets, RT reported.
"Such acts of thievery cannot remain without a response," he said after the European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell said that the first tranche of interest earned on the frozen funds, totalling some 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion), will be sent to Kiev in the first week of August to fund arms purchases.
"This money is not only stolen, but also spent to buy weapons. It's hard to imagine anything worse," Peskov contended, adding that tapping the funds in this manner would violate international law and property rights.
The West froze nearly $300 billion in assets belonging to the Central Bank of Russia shortly after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Most of the immobilized funds are being held in the EU's largest depositary and clearing house, Euroclear.
In May, the EU approved a plan to use the interest earned on the frozen assets to support Ukraine's recovery and defence requirements. Under the agreement, 90 per cent of the proceeds are expected to go into an EU-run fund for Ukrainian military aid, with the other 10 per cent to be allocated for supporting Kiev in other ways.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has also condemned the planned transfer of the funds and promised a "harsh" retaliation, RT reported.
"We have repeatedly said that we will respond very harshly," she said on Tuesday. "Naturally, we will act in the national interests, and they will feel it, and I think they know it."