The speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, warned Europe today that Russia has already written a law to retaliate if the West seizes almost 300 billion dollars of Russian assets and uses them to help Ukraine.
"We have a prepared answer. We have a draft law on retaliatory measures, which we are ready to consider immediately. And the Europeans will lose more than us," Matviyenko said, without giving details, reports RIA Novosti.
She is also a member of the powerful Russian Security Council.
After President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine in 2022, the US and its allies banned transactions with Russia's central bank and finance ministry, blocking about $300 billion in Russian assets in the West.
Top US officials want to seize assets to help Ukraine, although some bankers and European officials worry that such a seizure would set a dangerous precedent, Reuters reports.
On Saturday, the US House of Representatives adopted a law with a provision that enables the seizure of Russian assets, although most of the Russian assets are not in the US but in Europe.
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