The Kremlin on Wednesday criticised European Union plans to use income from frozen Russian assets to provide military aid to Ukraine as “expropriation.”
EU ministers earlier on Tuesday gave final approval to use the proceeds of Russian assets frozen in the EU to help Ukraine.
The agreement concerns the use of interest and other profits from the assets, but not the underlying assets themselves, which will remain frozen.
The move could yield as much as three billion euros (3.23 billion U.S. dollars) for aid in 2024 alone.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the EU had opted for a “trimmed-down” plan which nevertheless represented “nothing more than expropriation.”
He said Russia would “keep a close eye” on further developments.
According to the European Commission, around 210 billion euros worth of Russian Central Bank assets are frozen in the EU.
The Brussels-based financial institution Euro clear, which holds the lion’s share of the assets, recently announced that the assets had made around 4.4 billion euros in interest in 2023.
A total of 90 per cent of the money is set to fund military aid, while 10 per cent is expected to go to financial aid for Ukraine.
There are currently no plans to use the underlying assets, due to a combination of legal concerns, the likelihood of retaliation and the risk to investor confidence in the EU.
