Russia issued a dire warning to the West on Tuesday; threatening to retaliate violently if the US and EU confiscate Russian assets valued at hundreds of billions of dollars.
Following President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 military incursion into Ukraine, the US and its allies blocked dealings with Russia’s finance ministry and central bank, so obstructing around $300 billion worth of Russian sovereign assets located in the West.
As a first step toward its goal of utilizing the proceeds to assist Ukraine’s rebuilding, the European Union announced on Monday that it has passed a measure putting aside windfall earnings earned on assets frozen by the Russian central bank.
“This is theft: It’s the appropriation of something that doesn’t belong to you,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Sputnik radio, TASS reported.
Zakharova said the response from Moscow would be “extremely tough” as Russia felt it was essentially dealing with thieves.
“Considering that our country has qualified this as theft, the attitude will be towards thieves,” Zakharova said. “Not as political manipulators, not as overplayed technologists, but as thieves.”
Russia has said that if its property is seized then it will seize U.S., European and other assets in responses.
