Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian parliament's lower house, on Oct. 29 called for confiscating European assets in response to an EU proposal to use Russian assets for rebuilding Ukraine.
“In such cases, the confiscated assets belonging to unfriendly countries will be much larger than our frozen resources in Europe,” State Duma Speaker Volodin wrote on Telegram.
The statement comes as the European Union leaders have supported a proposal to use billions of euros in windfall taxes from Russian assets tied up in the West to rebuild Ukraine. During Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s allies have frozen over $300 billion from Russia's central bank reserves, including 211 billion euros in the EU.
Volodin called the EU proposal “a theft of our country’s frozen assets to continue militarizing Kyiv.”
In addition to the EU’s initiative, other countries have considered utilizing Russian resources for Ukraine’s benefit.
Earlier this month, the U.K. government had asked the country's central bank to explore how frozen Russian sovereign assets can fund Ukraine's defense. Meanwhile, the Group of Seven (G7) nations have pledged to keep Russian assets in their jurisdictions frozen until Moscow pays war reparations to Ukraine.
