Russia should expropriate West’s assets over ‘theft’ of Russian money – lawmaker
By Man Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly
LONDON (Reuters) -Russia ought to confiscate property owned by Westerners in response to a proposal by U.S. President Joe Biden to switch the frozen belongings of Russia’s elite to Ukraine, Russia’s most senior lawmaker stated on Sunday.
Biden on Thursday stepped up help for Ukraine, asking Congress for $33 billion to assist Kyiv, and to permit the U.S. state to grab extra belongings owned by Russian oligarchs and provides the proceeds to Ukraine.
Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin stated the luxurious yachts and villas of Russia’s oligarchs had not helped Russian improvement however that the West seemed to be engaged in easy “theft”.
“It’s proper to take mirror measures in the direction of companies in Russia whose homeowners come from unfriendly nations the place such measures have been taken: confiscate these belongings,” Volodin, who usually voices the Kremlin’s views, wrote on his Telegram channel.
“The proceeds from the sale must be used for the event of our nation,” he stated. “A harmful precedent has been created: it ought to hit the ‘States like a boomerang.”
Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine prompted america and its allies to impose essentially the most extreme sanctions in trendy historical past on Russia and Moscow’s enterprise elite, steps President Vladimir Putin casts as a declaration of financial battle.
Putin has repeatedly cautioned that Moscow will reply in variety, although to this point the Kremlin’s hardest financial response has been to chop off gasoline provides to Poland and Bulgaria and demand a brand new fee scheme for European consumers of gasoline.
After the West imposed sanctions on Russia, the $1.8 trillion economic system is heading for the most important contraction for the reason that years following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union amid hovering inflation.
A big switch of Russian belongings has begun, because the Russian state features much more affect over the economic system, many main Western buyers – reminiscent of vitality giants BP and Shell – exit, and oligarchs attempt to restructure their enterprise empires.
As so many Western homeowners both bought their Russian stakes or shuttered their companies, it was not instantly clear which particular belongings in Russia may very well be underneath risk.
Russia has proposed placing firms which have left Russia into exterior administration, and Kremlin chief Putin has stated Russia will now look eastwards to China and different nations after what he casts because the West’s perfidy.
Volodin singled out Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and america as nations which have been engaged within the “theft” of Russian belongings.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Man Faulconbridge in London; Enhancing by William Mallard, Alexandra Hudson)
