MOSCOW, October 26. /TASS/. The Russian government will have to deal with abandoned assets in its new Russian regions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
"I don't know if there will be a commission [formed to deal with it], but the fact that the government will deal with this issue is unequivocal," the Kremlin spokesman said.
"There are abandoned assets there, and, of course, they cannot be left idle, they will have to be launched, activated, respectively, someone has to take them on their balance sheet," Peskov said. In his opinion, "this is completely normal, because this is the territory of the Russian Federation."
He also stressed that the owners of the assets can claim their rights, but based on the fact that this is already the territory of Russia.
"In any case, the assets have owners and they all have the right under Russian law to claim their rights to this or that asset, but on the basis that this is the territory of the Russian Federation and the regions of the Russian Federation," the Kremlin spokesman said.
He recalled the already existing precedent for such activities after the return of Crimea to the Russian Federation.
"When we had Crimea, there were owners who abandoned their assets when Crimea became part of the Russian Federation," the Kremlin spokesman said. He recalled that all title holders then "were invited to claim their rights and re-register [them] under Russian jurisdiction." "Someone did it," he added.
From September 23 to September 27, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) as well as the Kherson Region and the Zaporozhye Region held a referendum where the majority of voters opted to join Russia.
On September 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the heads of the DPR and the LPR, the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions signed treaties on their accession to Russia.