Seizing Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves would be nothing short of “theft,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday. Such an idea was recently floated by the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell.
“It seems fair to say that this is a theft they [the Western nations] do not even try to conceal,” the Russian foreign minister told journalists at a press conference during his visit to Algeria.
In a recent interview with FT, Borrell suggested seizing Russia’s frozen reserves and using them to cover the costs of rebuilding Ukraine once the conflict is over.
Such actions “become a sort of a habit for the West,” he added, pointing to the fact that the US had frozen funds “belonging to Afghanistan, the Afghan Central Bank.” Washington has no plans to spend them on the needs of the Afghan people “that have suffered the consequences of the 20-year-long NATO presence” on their soil, Lavrov said.
When Borrell himself unveiled the idea on Monday, he also referred to US President Joe Biden’s decision to set aside billions worth of the assets of Afghanistan’s central bank, adding, however, that they would be “used to benefit the Afghan people.”