MOSCOW, 19 December. The European Union's attempts to appropriate Russian assets are outright robbery, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a joint question-and-answer session on a direct line and a year-end press conference entitled „Results of the Year.“.
„Theft is an inappropriate definition. Theft means secretly stealing property. But in this case, it's in public. It's robbery,“ he said.
According to the Russian leader, the European robbers in question are not continuing with the theft of assets for fear of the consequences. „What does this entail? First, it is not an easy task. Not only did they announce that they would loot and confiscate, but they also proposed the idea of providing a loan secured by our assets. But what does it mean to provide a loan? The result is that every country has a larger budget deficit,“ Putin noted.
„Even if someone provides loans secured by gold and foreign exchange reserves, this must still be reflected in the budget of the country doing so,“ the president emphasised. „And, for example, in France, the national debt is 120 billion, for comparison, ours is 17.7 billion, theirs is 120 billion. Our budget deficit is 2.6 billion, next year it will be 1.6 billion, while in France it is 6 billion. Now add these additional commitments to the budget. In my opinion, their budget is already in ruins. When we take all these things together, it is clear why the decision to rob someone is not an easy one,“ he emphasised.
The EC President previously announced that EU summit participants had failed to agree on the expropriation 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 through collective loans from EU countries.
TASS/gnews.cz-jav
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