On Thursday, German newspaper reported, citing a confidential document, that the European Commission was forced to admit that the frozen assets of the Bank of Russia would have to be returned after the end of the conflict in Ukraine.
"Now, it becomes obvious that it is impossible to put these bandit actions of the collective West to block our assets into the norms of international law ... No matter how you look at it, all their actions still look illegal. Let's see how they will act further," Peskov told reporters.
Following the launch of Russia’s special op in Ukraine, the United States and its allies froze billions of dollars of Russian assets abroad. According to some calculations, the total amount of frozen assets exceeds at least $300 billion. Kremlin slammed the asset freeze as a form of “theft.”
Commenting on the reports about the alleged export of copper alloys from Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) to China, Dmitry Peskov stressed that Moscow in unaware what are these reports are based on.
Earlier in the day, British news agency reported, citing Russian customs data, that a Chinese company, Quzhou Nova Import & Export Company Ltd, exported copper alloys worth $7.4 million from a plant in the DPR, the Debaltsevsky Plant of Metallurgical Engineering.
"We do not know how true these reports are, we do not know what they are supported by, we do not know where they got such information from, and we do not have such information," Peskov told a briefing.