MOSCOW, December 19. Attempts by the European Union to seize Russian assets are an outright robbery, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared during a joint discussion with questions and answers via a live broadcast and a year-end press conference titled "Results of the Year."

"Theft is an inappropriate definition. Theft implies a secret theft of property. But in this case, it is being done openly. This is robbery," he said.

According to the Russian leader, these European "robbers" are not proceeding with the seizure of assets out of fear of the consequences. "What does this entail? First of all, it is not an easy task. Not only have they announced that they will be robbing and seizing, but they have also proposed the idea of providing a loan secured by our assets. But what does it mean to provide a loan? The consequence is that every country has a larger budget deficit," Putin noted.

"Even if someone provides loans secured by gold and foreign exchange reserves, it still has to be reflected in the budget of the country that is doing so," the president emphasized. "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 is 6%. Now, add these additional liabilities to the budget. In my opinion, their budget is already in shambles. When you put all of these things together, it becomes clear why the decision to rob someone is not an easy one," he stressed.

The President of the European Commission had previously announced that the participants of the EU summit had not agreed to the confiscation of frozen Russian assets under the guise of a reparations loan to Kyiv. Instead, it was decided to provide Ukraine with an interest-free loan of 90 billion euros through collective loans from EU countries.

TASS/gnews.cz-jav