Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has warned the West that the seizure of Russian assets blocked by him will lead to a “dilution” of the dollar, according to Bloomberg, which is cited by Markets Insider.

“The Chinese are reducing their influence on American assets – this is a consequence of what is happening,” he said in an interview with RIA Novosti regarding discussions about the possibility of seizing “frozen” Russian assets in the West.

“Confidence in the dollar has already been undermined,” he said, warning that the confiscation of Russian assets by Western powers would further undermine the American currency.

Although he did not go into detail, he also warned that Moscow also has Western assets frozen by it and could respond “symmetrically” to any new actions against it.

His comments came after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak renewed calls in recent days for Western countries and their partners to take bolder action on Russian assets they have frozen.

“We need to be bolder in seizing hundreds of billions of frozen Russian assets. We start by taking the billions of interest generated by these assets and sending them to Ukraine. Then within the framework of the G7, we need to find legal ways to confiscate the assets themselves, and also to send these funds to Ukraine,” wrote the head of the British government in an article published by the Sunday Times on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“What a tribute it would be to Oleksiy Navalny’s struggle to hold the Russian state accountable for his actions,” Sunak also noted.

The EU reached a compromise on the use of frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine

The European Union, which has frozen 200 billion euros of Russian Central Bank assets, reached an agreement on January 30 on the first phase of a plan aimed at distributing profits from frozen Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine.

But these profits are much lower, reaching 3 billion euros last year, than the actual value of the assets. The EU, the G7 and Australia have frozen $283 billion in assets belonging to the Russian Central Bank alone, with more than two-thirds of that frozen in securities and cash in bank accounts in Europe.

But on February 12, the European Council proposed a plan to confiscate about 15 billion euros of expected profits from the frozen assets of the Central Bank of Russia and transfer them to Ukraine.

The United States has been pushing for more than a year to seize Russian assets to help rebuild Ukraine, but several major European powers have opposed the measure, fearing it would still be overturned by the courts.

Also, while Washington is the strongest supporter of the idea, only up to $5 billion of Russian assets are frozen in US institutions, with most of the rest blocked in the EU and elsewhere.

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