IDR 4,867 Trillion in Assets Seized by the West, Russia Has a Lot of Ways to Retaliate

MOSCOW – Russia own Western assets and property in large numbers on its territory, which could become a target for Moscow’s retaliation if the West takes advantage of frozen Russian assets. This was conveyed by the spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, as reported by Reuters.

This statement responds to the attitude of the group of developed countries that are members of G7 reportedly reached an agreement at a high-level meeting in Italy last week to use interest from Russian assets frozen by the West to provide a $50 billion loan to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, on several occasions, Russia emphasized that this policy was an illegal step and would backfire on the West and could damage confidence in the global financial system.

“Our country has a large amount of Western funds and property that are under Russian jurisdiction; all this may be subject to Russian policies and retaliatory measures,” Zakharova told reporters.

“Of course, no one will reveal these acts of retaliation to you. But the arsenal of political and economic countermeasures is vast,” he continued.

Economists, lawyers and experts say one of Russia’s most likely actions would be to seize foreign investors’ financial assets and securities currently held in special “C-type” accounts, access to which has been blocked since the start of the war unless Moscow abandons them.

As is known, Western sanctions have frozen around USD 300 billion or the equivalent of IDR 4,867 trillion (exchange rate IDR 16,224 per USD) in Russian sovereign funds since the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict.

Brussels-based clearing house Euroclear holds about 191 billion euros ($207 billion) of that amount, and has earned nearly 4.4 billion euros ($4.7 billion) in interest over the past year.