Press TV – March 21, 2024
Russia says it will take retaliatory measures in accordance with its own interests if the European Union decides to take revenues from the Kremlin’s frozen assets and use them to buy weapons for Ukraine.
Brussels is pressing ahead with a plan to use the profits generated from billions of euros of Russian assets frozen in Europe to arm Ukraine, a senior official said Tuesday.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell hopes that EU leaders will endorse the plan at a summit in Brussels starting on Thursday.
But ahead of the meeting, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Moscow will use every legal mechanism at its disposal if Brussels goes ahead with the plan Moscow described as “banditry and theft.”
“Naturally, we will use all possible judicial mechanisms, those that are available now, and all those that become available in the future,” he said.
“And on the basis of reciprocity we will not retaliate in kind, but choose different methods in a way that corresponds to our own interests,” he added.
The EU is holding around $217 billion in Russian central bank assets as part of sanctions imposed on Moscow over its “special military operation” in Ukraine. Most of the funds are held in Belgium.
The 27-nation bloc estimates that the interest on that money could provide around $3.3 billion each year.
Under the plan, around 90% of the money would be put into a special fund that many EU countries already use to get reimbursed for arms and ammunition they send to Ukraine.
“The Russians will not be very happy. The amount of money, 3 billion per year, is not extraordinary, but it is not negligible,” Borrell told reporters.
On Tuesday, European Council President Charles Michel called on the EU to shift to a “war economy” mode and “give Ukraine enough support to stop Russia.”
The EU has provided Ukraine with over $30 billion in military assistance, ranging from ammunition to air-defense systems, Leopard tanks, and fighter jets — in addition to supplies provided directly on a bilateral basis by the bloc’s member states.
Chinese banks under pressure by EU, US
In separate remarks, the Kremlin spokesperson slammed the West for putting “unprecedented pressure” on Chinese banks accepting payments from Russia.
“The unprecedented US and EU pressure on China continues… this creates certain problems,” Peskov said.
Russian media reported earlier on Thursday that some Chinese lenders had stopped accepting payments in Chinese yuan from Russian companies.
Officials in Washington and Brussels are targeting companies and banks in third countries they say are helping Russia avoid Western sanctions by trading and executing payments.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, China has become Russia’s most important economic ally. Trade between the two world powers has reached more than $240 billion, according to official data from Beijing.
The figure is a record for both Beijing and Moscow.
I wanted to read this, but it angers me. If they use Russian money to effectively kill Russians, then Putin should destroy the ECB HQ.
Think about it, Russia providing UKrainian Nazi military with arms?
Putin won’t do it, so let another Russian take the right decisions.
3.3 billion on 217 billion that is a fucking good return for some Jew somewhere
Who says it’s not about the money
Frozen is one of those putrid euphemisms that the women of the West (all Western leadership is feminine in the negative, spiteful sense as Henry Makow pointed out) always use
– Frozen means STOLEN (like stealing 50 per cent of your spouse’s future earnings), and of course, in their instinctively putrid way they are using it to spend on weaponry to kill good Christian Europeans.
The EU, of course, is proudly ‘post Christian’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/21/christianity-non-christian-europe-young-people-survey-religion
This is a situation to be in, isn’t it?
One finds oneself marrooned in one’s own country supporting ‘the Enemy’ because they share your values and don’t actually want to annhialate your culture –
https://gorthodox.com/en/news-item/russian-parliament-consults-americans-moving-to-russia-receives-media-attention
And find yourself an Enemy (PEP) liable to be debanked in your own country because you ‘don’t align with our values’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12312737/Top-bank-lied-Nigel-Farage-ban-Coutts-axed-saying-wasnt-rich-emerges-believed-views-dont-align-values.html
The values of warped Corporate/ Communist fanatics who despise your race, gender, sexual orientation, personal and thological history and culture and wish you and all your kind were dead.
Oooh – this is a moral dilemma , isn’t it? Like cynical Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca . . . possibly not –
In retaliation Russia won’t need impose sanctions like the US does to get its way by threatening economic harm to countries, companies, banks, individuals, sports events, charities etc. All it has to do is ask the world majority to support a boycott of non-essential western goods and fast-foods and many would do it. When they lose enough money many western companies will just walk away from their businesses, and Russia can say they are claiming the buildings and fittings since they’ve been abandoned by their owners.
Nothing was decided in Brussels on Thursday:
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-doubles-down-ukraine-war-while-eu-leaders-divided-how-finance-weapons/
Budapest has said at home that it will not participate in the financing of weapons for Ukraine. So a veto by PM Viktor Orban coming up to unnerve EU Parliament? But since several other MEPs have spoken in opposition (Germany, The Netherlands and Austria) the need for a veto may not even arise. So the decision will be left to EU Parliament.
So the chances are that von der Leyen’s push will fail. That raises hope that Ukraine will capitulate. Not even the psychotic clown Zelensky can hope to gain anything from wasting more of Ukraine’s already tragically diminished manpower. Let us pray.
“Russia vows retaliation if EU arms Ukraine with its frozen asset profits” … Russia won’t do Jack shit as far as “retaliation”, but Shlomo and the Jew Crew wouldn’t hesitate to temporarily crash the financial systems to throw everyone into a panic, and blame it on whomever happens to be the Jew target du jour.
There are news reports of a mass shooting at a music hall venue near Moscow this Friday evening. It’s not clear whether this attack came before or after Russia vetoed a US resolution in the UN. Are they related?
@ Umbra Bellator on March 22, 2024 at 5:11 pm
‘Russia won’t do Jack shit as far as “retaliation”. ..’
Please explain why you think this. Is it because there is nothing Russia can do that amounts to retaliation?