Russian tit-for-tat: Western assets could be seized in Russia
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Russia has threatened to seize Western assets under its jurisdiction if the West goes ahead with its plot to allocate frozen Russian funds to Ukraine.
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Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova attends Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's annual news conference in Moscow, January 18, 2023. (AP)
Russia possesses a "wide arsenal" of economic and political countermeasures if the West seizes its sovereign assets, including a tit-for-tat confiscation of Western assets in Russia, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.
Zakharova highlighted that Russia has a substantial amount of Western assets, including funds and property, under its governance, warning that they could all be subject to seizure as part of the Russian response.
"All of it may be subject to Russian retaliatory policy and retaliatory actions. The arsenal of political and economic countermeasures is wide," she said, without revealing the nature of the possible retaliatory actions.
This comes after the G7 asserted in a statement that Russia must bear responsibility for the damages inflicted on Ukraine, which have surpassed $486 billion. On June 12, they agreed to provide Ukraine with $50 billion by utilizing frozen Russian assets by the end of the year.
Peace by whose terms?
At a press conference following a G7 summit in Italy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni stated on Saturday that the release of Russian assets frozen in Western jurisdictions will be contingent upon the commencement of a peace process in Ukraine.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia is prepared to initiate negotiations with Ukraine under specific conditions. If Kiev and Western capitals reject this offer, as they have done in the past, they bear political and moral responsibility for the ongoing violence, he said.
Putin outlined the conditions for the proposed peace plan, stating that Ukrainian forces must withdraw entirely from the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, as well as from the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
He specified that the withdrawal should cover the entire territory of these regions within their original administrative borders before they became part of Ukraine. Once Kiev agrees to these terms and begins withdrawing troops while also formally renouncing NATO membership plans, Russia will immediately cease fire and commence negotiations.
