MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. The European Union’s attempts to appropriate Russian assets are outright robbery, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during the combined Direct Line Q&A session and year-end press conference headlined "Results of the Year."
"Theft is an inappropriate definition. Theft means secret stealing of property. But in this case, it’s out in the open. That’s robbery," he said.
According to the Russian leader, the European robbers in question aren’t moving forward with the asset grab for fear of the consequences. "What does this entail? Firstly, it is no easy feat. They did not simply announce that they would rob and seize, but put forward an idea to issue a loan secured by our assets. But what does it mean to issue a loan? The consequence is that each country runs a bigger budget deficit," Putin noted.
"Even if someone issues loans secured by gold and foreign exchange reserves, it must still be reflected in the budget of the country that does so," the president stressed. "And, for example, in France, the national debt is 120%, for comparison, ours is 17.7%, theirs is 120%. Our budget deficit is 2.6%, next year it will be 1.6%, while in France it constitutes 6%. Well, now add these additional obligations to the budget. In my opinion, their budget is already a mess. Taking these things together, you can see why the decision to rob someone is not an easy one," he emphasized.
The EC President previously announced that participants at the EU summit failed to agree on the expropriation of frozen Russian assets under the guise of a reparations loan to Kiev. Instead, a decision was made to provide Ukraine with an interest-free loan of 90 bln euros through collective loans from EU countries.