MOSCOW, January 31. /TASS/. Unfriendly countries’ attempts to confiscate Russia’s assets are one more reason to move away from the dollar and make alternatives to SWIFT much more attractive, Maxim Osadchiy, head of BKF Bank's analysis department, told TASS.

"Attempts to confiscate frozen Russian assets intensify the processes of de-globalization and fragmentation of the international financial space. These attempts contribute to the de-dollarization and "de-euroization" of countries that are in the "risk zone" and lead to an increase in the popularity of alternative currencies, primarily the yuan, in international payments. The freezing of sovereign assets contributes to the creation and growing popularity of alternatives to SWIFT - for example, the Chinese CIPS and the Russian System for Transfer of Financial Messages," Osadchiy said.

The only thing keeping Western countries from doing this is Russia’s potential in-kind response, the analyst noted.

"Russian banks and enterprises owned by unfriendly non-residents act as "human shields" against the confiscation of Russian assets. Among them are the Russian bank of the Austrian financial group Raiffeisen Group, which made a lot of money thanks to anti-Russian sanctions, as well as Russian banks owned by the Italian groups Unicredit and Intesa, the Dutch group ING, the Hungarian bank OTP and others," Osadchiy noted.

The expert also said that total investments by the European Union in the Russian economy at the end of 2022 amounted to $223.3 billion, including $98.3 billion from Cyprus, $50.1 billion from the Netherlands, $17.3 billion from Germany, $16.6 billion from France and $12.9 billion from Italy.

On Tuesday, the representative of the European Commission (EC), Christian Wigand, said that the EC welcomes the approval by the EU countries of the proposal to transfer income from the reinvestment of frozen Russian assets to a separate account for the subsequent transfer of these funds to the EU budget. However, no mechanism for transferring this money to Kiev has yet been developed, and no time frame has been set for its creation.

Last December, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that Russia would respond in kind if its assets in Europe are confiscated. As Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on January 31, the EU understands that Russia will respond extremely harshly to the confiscation of its frozen assets, which stops Brussels from taking this action.