Russia accuses the European Union of confiscating its frozen assets to finance Ukraine

The Russian diplomat stated in an interview with RIA Novosti that “since 2024, the European Union has been confiscating profits resulting from the reinvestment of illegally frozen reserves of the Russian Central Bank in the Belgian Euroclear platform.”

“During this period, the total volume of revenues transferred to Ukraine amounted to eight billion euros, of which more than 3.5 billion euros were allocated directly to the purchase of weapons,” Maslennikov said.

More than 210 billion euros of the assets of the Russian Central Bank are frozen in the European Union. Moscow has repeatedly described the freezing of Russian assets in Europe as illegal. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Russia would respond if the West confiscated its frozen assets.

This development comes at a time when Maslennikov had previously announced that “the European Union is no longer able to support Ukraine at its own expense, so discussions on the confiscation of Russian assets to finance Kiev have resumed in Brussels,” noting that “this new round of discussion is being pushed by those countries on whose territory there is nothing kept, or there is a small share of our money - Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland and Germany.”

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service had previously announced that “experts in the European Union are discussing proposals to create a new structure in which Russian assets can be hidden, by removing them from the Euroclear platform that is subject to Belgian jurisdiction,” noting that “European bureaucrats fear that without confiscating Russian assets they will not be able to finance the Kiev regime indefinitely.”