EU behaving like criminal ‘gang’ – Kremlin
The EU countries debating ways they could “steal” Russian assets to prop up Ukraine are behaving like a criminal “gang,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
EU leaders convened on Wednesday in Copenhagen for an informal summit to discuss a plan to provide Ukraine with a €140 billion ($164 billion) loan backed by Russia's immobilized central bank assets. Some of the bloc’s members, however, continued to voice concerns about the legal risks associated with such a step.
Most notably, Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever, whose country hosts Euroclear, where most EU-held Russian assets sit, cautioned his colleagues that “there’s no free money. There are always consequences.” “I want their signature saying, if we take [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s money… we’re all going to be responsible if it goes wrong,” he said. Luxembourg’s prime minister, Luc Frieden, voiced similar apprehensions.
Commenting on the deliberations on Thursday, Peskov likened the EU to a group of mobsters planning their next heist. “This all looks like a gang: someone keeps lookout, someone robs, and someone, like Belgium, shouts, ‘Guys, let’s share responsibility,” he quipped, adding that those involved would face “legal and other possible accountability.”
A day earlier, he said the ideas under discussion amounted to theft. “We are talking about plans for the illegal seizure of Russian property,” Peskov said, warning such moves would “completely” undermine trust in the inviolability of property and that “the boomerang will very seriously hit” key depository countries.
After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Western governments froze roughly $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets, about €210 billion of which is in Europe, including some €185 billion at Brussels-based Euroclear. While EU officials have for months discussed ways to confiscate the funds outright and hand them over to Ukraine, they have so far refrained from doing so due to the enormous legal and reputational risks such a move would entail.
However, the EU moved to channel the interest accrued by the assets to Ukraine, having already transferred an estimated €4 billion to Kiev.
