BRUSSELS, May 21. /TASS/. EU countries have approved a plan to use 90% of the proceeds from frozen Russian assets to provide Ukraine with weapons, Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic Jan Lipavsky announced.
"We have approved in the EU using revenues from Russia's central bank's frozen assets to help Ukraine. Up to 3 billion euros only this year, 90% goes for Ukraine's military," he wrote in the X social network.
Earlier, Valerie Urban, executive director of the Euroclear depository, where over 200 billion euros of Russian funds are being held, revealed an alleged mechanism for the European Union to use income from Russian assets. According to her, the amount that the European Commission actually receive will be between 87% and 89% of the net profit from the reinvestment of Russian assets after paying Belgian taxes of 25%. Euroclear insists that between 11% and 13% of net profits remain on the company's accounts to cover its risk associated with lawsuits by investors to recover their funds.
The European Commission intends to receive from Euroclear from 2 billion to 3 billion euros under this mechanism. Of these, 90% should be used to finance arms supplies to Kiev, and the remaining 10% will go to support the European military-industrial complex.
Earlier Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Moscow will challenge the West’s steps aimed at seizing Russian assets. As he explained, this will entail "very serious judicial and legal costs for those who make such decisions and who take advantage of such decisions." According to him, Russia will begin to work out response measures that are unlikely to be tit-for-tat ones.