Moscow blasts EU decision to use income from Russian assets

On Tuesday, the Council of the EU announced that it had officially approved the decision that will allow using income from frozen Russian sovereign assets to be used to provide military assistance to Ukraine. On Wednesday, the EU published a detailed decision on frozen Russian assets as part of the package of economic sanctions against Moscow, which is effective starting May 23.

“We have already said that such decisions, well, although we see that they are cautious, they see the potential danger of such decisions and understand the danger for them of the potential consequences that are inevitable, so they went for a truncated version, but the truncated version is nothing more than expropriation,” Peskov told reporters.

Russia will continue assessing the consequences of the EU’s decision and its response, the official added.

The Kremlin spokesman acknowledged that the Russian government was aware of warnings from global financial institutions about the West’s intention to use funds generated from frozen Russian state assets to provide military aid to Ukraine.

“We have taken note of the recent warnings made by the heads of international financial institutions that [the West] should rethink any step that will inevitably damage the global monetary system,” Peskov added.

IMF Communications Director Julie Kozack stated last week that any action taken by the West should have “sufficient legal underpinnings” so that it does not undermine the functioning of the global monetary system.