sanctions against Russia
Lambsdorff for confiscation of oligarch mansions
02/14/2022, 02:19 am
The threat of sanctions is intended to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine. The FDP politician Alexander Graf Lambsdorff advocates also focusing on Russian real estate in Germany. In the event of war, these should be confiscated by the German state.
The deputy chairman of the FDP parliamentary group, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, has brought up the confiscation of villas belonging to Russian oligarchs as a sanction against a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Lambsdorff told Bild TV on Sunday evening that some oligarchs had “huge real estate holdings in Berlin.” He suggested: “If we are not sure where the money that financed property X came from, then we will requisition property X.”
“We have to take a more political approach to this idea of sanctions, so far we have had a very legal understanding of sanctions,” argued Lambsdorff. Lambsdorff named travel restrictions and the freezing of accounts as further possible sanctions against Russian oligarchs.
According to the FDP foreign policy expert, this should make it clear to the Russian government “that we consider this to be a really existential situation.” It is about the European peace order, about the question of whether “war is coming back to Europe”.
The Russian President must know that an attack on Ukraine would mean “the end of relations with Europe”. Then economic relations would be reduced to the absolute minimum, bans on activities would be issued and it would be very difficult for Russian banks to refinance themselves. “There will be such a hard price economically as we have never done before,” Lambsdorff warned. In view of a massive Russian troop deployment on the border with Ukraine, the West fears that Russia is preparing to invade the neighboring country. The Kremlin categorically denies this.