MOSCOW, January 5. /TASS/. The planned seizure of Russian funds and property by Germany for their subsequent transfer to Ukraine may lure other countries into ignoring international law, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Thursday.
"The German government has decided to shift problems created by their predecessors on our country. With this goal in view, they are planning to confiscate Russian assets to help Ukraine rebuild," he wrote on his Telegram channel.
According to Volodin, this decision "would give a start to a process where all countries may ignore international law and seize what they think fit." He said that Germany should remember from its own history "how attempts to infringe on others’ property rights ended."
The senior Russian lawmaker warned that Russia would have the right to similar steps against assets of Germany and other nations if Russian assets are confiscated. "We are living in a different reality now, both in line with the UN Charter and on the basis of precedents. It would therefore be correct to remember the recognition of Kosovo’s independence. The United States, Germany, France and other countries who made the decision have no choice but to agree to the right of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Crimea, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic as well as the Kherson and the Zaporozhye regions to self-determination," he explained.
The Duma speaker insisted that European countries, primarily Germany and France, should pay for what is happening in Ukraine, "not only because their economies are the largest in the European Union." "It is [former German chancellor Angela] Merkel and [ex-French president Francois] Hollande who the global public should blame for the conflict in Ukraine after having sabotaged the Minsk agreements," he added.