(Reuters) – Allowing Ukraine to use Russia’s foreign currency reserves frozen by the West, a hypothesis debated by the G7 and the European Union according to Berlin, would be “pure and simple theft”, the Kremlin warned on Tuesday.
Such a move would be “illegal” and would result in a “suitable response” from Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, while German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said he was open to the idea, in order to rebuild the EU. Ukraine, in an interview given to several European newspapers.
“I am politically open to the idea of seizing the foreign assets of the Russian central bank. We already have this discussion within the G7 and the EU, and there are proposals on the table,” says Christian Lindner in this interview published Tuesday by Handelsblatt, Les Echos, Corriere della Sera and El Mundo.
“As far as private sector assets are concerned, we will have to see what is legally possible. We must respect the rule of law, even if we are dealing with Russian oligarchs,” he adds.
Russia has been subjected to a battery of financial and economic sanctions since the offensive launched by the Russian army against Ukraine last February.
The Group of Seven countries have banned all transactions with the Russian central bank and seized assets held by it on their territory for an amount of about 300 billion dollars.
(Reuters report, Paul Carrel in Berlin, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse, edited by Kate Entringer)
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