EU officials announced that the alliance has frozen more than USD 24 billion in the Russian Central Bank’s assets as of Moscow launched the military campaign in Ukraine.

Russia said that Western sanctions have resulted in the freezing of about USD 300 billion in the global central banks’ assets.

About 23 billion euros (USD24.5 billion) in Russian Central Bank’s assets has been frozen by the alliance as of Moscow launched the military campaign in Ukraine at the end of February, which accounts for nearly 1/10 of the above figures, said Didier Reynders, the Justice Commissioner of the European Union (EU), on May 25 this year.

This is the first time the EU publicly announced this data, after collecting information from the member countries’ governments. The EU’s figure is much lower than that of the US, which is said to have frozen USD 100 billion of Russian Central Bank.

In addition, EU countries have frozen more than USD 10 billion in physical assets, such as yachts and villas, linked to the tycoons and officials with ties to Kremlin palace, said Reynders.

He did not explain why the EU, the world’s third biggest economy, froze so few assets from Russian Central Bank. He also refused to say whether all EU governments have reported the asset freezing.

Many the EU member countries are traditionally careful in enforcing their sanctions. Several countries also refused to publicly announce whether to freeze Russian assets.

After Russia launched the military campaign in Ukraine, the US led its alliance to impose many rounds of sanctions against Russia, such as removing a few Russian banks from the SWIFT international payment system, banning the import of many goods from Russia and abolishing Russia’s most-favored-nation status. The US also announced a ban on imports of oil and other energy from Russia.

RT reports that Russia is subject to about 10,000 restrictions, and Russia is turned into the most sanctioned nation in the world.

Russia responded by banning the export of more than 200 commodities in the telecommunications, medical, automotive, agricultural, electrical engineering and technology sectors until the end of 2022. Moscow also banned a series of Western officials from entering into Russia, sanctioned dozens of the US’, the EU’s and Singapore’s energy companies, as well as required “unfriendly” countries to buy Russian energy in rubles.

Source : VnExpress