Zakharova: Our response to the EU's freezing of Russian assets will not be long in coming

Published at: 13/12/2025 12:39 PM

This Saturday, December 13, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, warned that Russia's response to the decision of the European Union (EU) to indefinitely block its sovereign assets frozen in EU territory “will not be long in coming”.

He also described the measure as a violation of international law, while also rejecting the European initiative to use Russian Central Bank funds to finance Ukraine, RT reports.

He assured that any action on these assets without Moscow's consent constitutes “a case of pure and simple theft”, regardless of the legal arguments Brussels tries to use. “Such crimes do not go without consequences in international relations,” he stressed.

Zakharova noted that it is revealing that the European Commission justifies the use of Russian assets based on internal provisions of the bloc on economic emergency measures.

He noted that this evidences an attempt to improve the EU's financial situation by using billions of dollars of Russian state reserves. At the same time, he argued that the discourse of European “unity” has been weakened by the open rejection of the plan by several member States.

Since February 2022, Western countries have frozen more than 300 billion dollars in Russian state assets, of which some 242.8 billion are in the EU, mainly in the Belgian depositary Euroclear. In September, the European Commission proposed granting Ukraine a “repair loan” of 140 billion euros financed with these funds, an initiative that has been objected to by countries such as Belgium for possible legal consequences.

In this context, the Central Bank of Russia announced the initiation of legal action against Euroclear for losses resulting from the freezing of its assets, while Moscow reiterated that these measures violate international law.

President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia is preparing a retaliatory package and warned of possible negative effects for the global financial system, considering that confidence in the eurozone could be seriously affected.

Mazo News Team