Moscow, November 8 – The confiscation of Russian assets in the West will have serious consequences and there will be retaliatory measures, said Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary to the Russian president. It was announced last night that the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the US Congress has supported a bill that grants the president the right to confiscate sovereign Russian assets, and the Secretary of State the power to transfer them to Ukraine and international organizations. Peskov noted that both the US and Europe are consistently working towards illegally continuing the seizure of Russian assets. “This is illegal, it contradicts all possible rules. This will, of course, be challenged indefinitely by our country. This will result in very serious legal and judicial costs for those who make and use such decisions,” said the press secretary. He added that the Russian authorities will consider retaliatory measures, but they are unlikely to be mirror-like. “But they will be in the best interests of our country,” concluded Peskov. Since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, Western countries have increased their sanctions pressure on Moscow, freezing Russian assets worth billions of dollars. Since then, the US, the European Union, and other Western countries have been actively working on creating the legal conditions for confiscating these funds. The official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, called these actions by the West theft. In turn, the head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, has stated that the Russian authorities are preparing legal actions to challenge the freezing of international reserves.
