MOSCOW: A number of European leaders are supporting Vladimir Zelensky against the interests of their countries, a senior Russian lawmaker s...
MOSCOW: A number of European leaders are supporting Vladimir Zelensky against the interests of their countries, a senior Russian lawmaker said.
"Zelensky is sparing no effort to remain in power. He is supported by a number of European leaders, who are doing this to the prejudice of their countries," speaker of the Russian State Duma, or lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.
According to Volodin, European countries transferred money to Kiev in hope of being compensated in the form of Russia's immobilized assets. "But they have failed. And the money is gone. It has been embezzled," he noted.
EU and G7 countries immobilized around 300 billion euro of Russian assets. Nearly 180 billion euro are held by Belgium’s Euroclear depository. The EU summit earlier this month failed to reach an agreement on the expropriation of the frozen Russian assets under the pretext of a "reparations loan" to Ukraine. Instead, they decided to grant a 90-billion-euro loan to Kiev in 2026-2027 from their own budgets. The depository has repeatedly objected to expropriating Russian assets, warning that this step may entail Russia seizing European or Belgian assets in other parts of the world through legal action.
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