“Retaliations will follow”, threatens the Russian ambassador in Rome, if Italy participates in the seizure of frozen Russian assets
Russian Ambassador Alexei Paramonov. Photo credit: Mauro Scrobogna / LaPresse / Profimedia
The Russian ambassador in Rome, Alexei Paramonov, who has already engaged in several extremely aggressive disputes with Italy, warned the Peninsula not to participate in the plans to use Moscow's frozen assets in Europe for the benefit of Ukraine, which he called the “theft of the century”, the Italian newspaper La Stampa reports on Monday, quoted by Rador Radio Romania.
“Italy's complicity in a financial crime of this magnitude risks substantially undermining, for many years to come, the very possibility of restoring economic and trade cooperation with Russia,” the Russian diplomat said in a statement posted on the embassy's Telegram channel.
“Beware of reprisals”, is the threat sent by Paramonov to Italy and the EU.
The Russian ambassador speaks of “a fraudulent scheme which has and cannot have any legal justification”.
He insists that, if passed, it would “classify it as theft and oblige Russia to immediately engage in a retaliatory mechanism that would seek to compensate for losses resulting from hostile actions and to inflict similar damages on all those who took them.”
Following Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union, the United States and their allies froze over $300 billion worth of Russian sovereign assets.
Most of this money is in the Belgian securities depository, Euroclear.
European governments and G7 countries have been exploring ways to generate revenue from these frozen funds without confiscating them outright, as doing so risks legal and political ramifications.
Brussels has so far been hesitant to seize the assets because of potential tax and legal pitfalls. Instead, it uses the profits generated by the assets to finance the defense and reconstruction of Ukraine through the $50 billion G7 loan and a separate EU program.
In recent months, there have been increasing calls for the EU to pursue more radical ways of using the profits for Ukraine's benefit, such as riskier investments.
Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was considering giving Ukraine a reparations loan financed by cash balances associated with frozen Russian assets.
And at the end of August, the head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, stated that it is impossible to imagine that Russia will get back its frozen assets inside the EU bloc if Moscow does not pay compensation.
Ukraine and some EU states, including Poland and the Baltic countries, have asked the bloc to confiscate those assets and use them to support Kiev. This call, however, was rejected by France, Germany and Belgium.
