Kremlin: US has not notified Russia of support for asset confiscation

Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that Washington did not notify Moscow about supporting the decision to confiscate Russian assets, as there are almost no communication channels between the countries.

He called the White House statement itself provocative, Kommersant reports.

"Of course, we are talking about a very provocative statement that announces the possibility of illegal actions against our property, against our assets. This cannot but have profound consequences. We have talked about it," Peskov said.

Earlier, Bloomberg wrote that the White House supported the bill on the transfer of frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine. The discussion on the application of the measure is scheduled at the G7 summit in February 2024, before the second anniversary of the start of hostilities in Ukraine. The transfer of assets may be accepted as additional financial aid to Kyiv.

On January 6, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on allies to speed up the creation of a legal framework for asset transfers. The EU, as its representatives stated, has frozen about $300bn since the beginning of 2022. The same amount was mentioned by the head of the Russian Finance Ministry, Anton Siluanov.