MOSCOW, August 22. /TASS/. Russia’s government and the Bank of Russia have drafted a decree on unblocking a chunk of foreign assets to be exchanged for Russian ones, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at a meeting of the Council for strategic development and national projects headed by President Vladimir Putin.

"As of today, the assets of more than 3.5 mln Russian citizens worth more than 1.5 trillion rubles have been blocked. Considering the decisions you supported, we suggest beginning to exchange our citizens’ assets for the assets of foreign investors which today are stored n C-type accounts. At the first stage, we plan to unblock accounts belonging to retail investors which contain around 100 bln rubles ($1 bln). And here the government and the Central Bank have drafted a respective decree, and we ask you to support this decision as well," Siluanov told Putin.

Financial sovereignty is not self-isolation, the minister noted. "We welcome foreign investments and work on making our market more attractive. For this purpose, in August of this year, a decision was made to pay dividends without restrictions to foreigners who are investing money now in the Russian economy, are currently investing money. We say: all investments that are made this year and later <…> may be withdrawn as dividends in the amount of investments produced in our economy. We are opening our market, we are open to foreign investors who want to enter our market," he explained.