Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia’s State Duma, said Sunday that Russia should confiscate property owned by Westerners in response to President Biden’s plan to transfer seized Russian assets to Ukraine.
Last week, Biden asked Congress to craft legislation that would give him the power to use the frozen assets of Russian billionaires as funding for Ukraine. Volodin called the plan simple “theft” and said Moscow should respond in kind.
“It is right to take mirror measures towards businesses in Russia whose owners come from unfriendly countries where such measures were taken: confiscate these assets,” Volodin said on Telegram.
Volodin said if Moscow seizes Western assets, it should go towards Russia’s development. “A dangerous precedent has been created: it should hit the States like a boomerang,” he said.
The House has passed a bill that would give Biden the authority to seize private Russian assets and use them for Ukraine, but it’s not clear if the legislation is comprehensive enough for what Biden wants. The measure had strong bipartisan support and passed overwhelmingly in a vote of 417-8.
The few US lawmakers against the bill have warned of setting a dangerous precedent. “Giving Biden unilateral authority to seize property, without providing some semblance of due process, sets a dangerous precedent regardless of whose property is to be taken,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) wrote on Twitter.
Since the US and its Western allies have started imposing sanctions aimed at decimating Russia’s economy, Moscow has responded in strategic ways, including by asking European countries to pay for gas in rubles. For refusing to pay in rubles, Poland and Bulgaria have had their Russian gas supply cut off.
De-dollarization will become a big topic over the next 3 years. Washington and London destroyed the dollar’s reserve currency status and all trust in our banking system.
Just flatten Kiev and take some of those $100 bills that Zelensky is receiving.
Nothing new here, Russia is already taking Western assets, stealing the Ukrainian industrial heartland, and its soldiers looting every Ukrainian home/establishments they walk by.
I thought Ukraine was kicking ass?
They are, did you hear about Russians in Kyiv? I know you are hoping for Ukrainians to get annihilated so there is peace.
You talked as though the Russians were running rampant across Ukraine, so my question was legit. And you seem to be the one who wants Ukraine to be annihilated as you think this is all about some out of control mad dictator who is hell bent on seeing that happen. You, like the others in your little echo chamber, think Russia’s concerns are going to magically go away. Unfortunately those concerns will only intensify with the addition of Sweden and Finland to NATO making a bad ending more inevitable. So, what I want, is the same thing I wanted before the invasion, diplomacy.
I got your point however, Ukraine was going to fight back with or without NATO and West support. They know this Thug and really a Mad Dictator is not going to stop from taking Ukraine and turn it into another Belarus (a pseudo Russian colony) or even worse, completely annexed into Russia (same sh!t Israel is doing to Palestine). Many Russians hate Ukrainians to death and believe they should not have their own country. And diplomacy with a liar Putin who uses the NATO membership, believe Ukraine is part of Russia, and the BS Neo nazi excuse to invade? That’s not diplomacy. Russians are getting their asses handed to them by a significantly smaller and poorer country. Proportionally speaking, they are winning by just comparing the sizes of their armies. Russia can take the east but in the end, the smaller guy gave them two black eyes and humiliated their army. I’m with the underdog here.
“Russians are getting their asses handed to them by a significantly smaller and poorer country.”
This is a war between U.S./NATO and Russia at the U.S.’s insistence. Ukraine wouldn’t be able to do jack squat if it were not for the U.S. pumping $Billions in war materiel, advisors, military trainers, and mercenaries into Ukraine. The U.S. and her NATO state vassals picked this war with Russia and made Ukraine the battleground.
Yes, you get my point and then you’re right back to the same tripe about it being about a “mad dictator” and pretending NATO encroachment didn’t really happen or isn’t still happening. As if the country you live in would put up with the former Warsaw Pact expanding to our borders. But for some strange reason this shouldn’t be an issue with Russia. And the Nazi thing isn’t even denied by Ukraine but that also is just a figment of Putin’s imagination according to you. And once again you talk about this conflict as if you’re rooting for a team in a sporting event. If Russia’s concerns aren’t addressed through diplomacy more people will continue to die. And giving Russia two black eyes while Ukraine is destroyed is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. But that’s fine with you. The only thing that will happen is the conditions will worsen and we’ll keep getting closer to WW3.
Read. We’ll take this issue on next article.
I guess the name Orcs is really fitting.
Plus they come from Mordor, sorry, I mean Russia.
The Orcs. Lol. Perfect.
About time Russia starts paying for all the damage they have caused in Ukraine.
And since the average Russian is rather poor, what better way than using the oligarchs money, that they themselves stole in the first place?
417 Morons…!
Begs more questions than answers. Striking out when you don’t have the power to get what you want? A new cold war. They are doing this without the Responsibility to declare war on Russia. Its a cheat for a proxy war. Lets poke the Nuclear armed bear. Lets tell the world, we are going to weaken it. Instead of a negotiated settlement, lets sacrifice all the years of work & labor in Russia. Are they going to pressure their European alliance members to nationalize property also?
I hope Russia only targets U.S. companies that have abandoned Russia but still have assets they can reach. Leave U.S. companies who are still doing business in Russia alone.
British, American, French, and German oligarchs have mega-yachts too. All NATO countries have oligarchs with mega-yachts. Why the US Govt thinks it can just go around sanctioning and confiscating property with impunity, never thinking — or so it seems — that their adversaries can do the same, escapes me. (Neocons is why.)
Are we returning to an era of privateers where anything that floats and belongs to an adversary, can be boarded and seized by men with guns? What about commercial shipping? Oil tankers, grain carriers, container ships? Really?
The US has already arrogated to itself, and exercised, the “right” to seize Iranian oils shipments. Russia however, is not Iran.
There is this idea, built up over the decades since the end of the cold war, that the US can do anything it wants — color revolutions, regime changes, R2P military action, coups, torture, assassinations — to anyone, and they can’t do anything — won’t dare do anything — because the US has this monster military that can and will “bomb them back to the stone age”.
But Russia has now said “Not in our backyard. We warned you. You wouldn’t listen. And now we’ve had enough!” And Russia isn’t Iraq or Iran or Libya. Nukes mean something.
The trouble is the US is so hubristic, so arrogant, so “exceptionalist”, so unable to comprehend the price they will have to pay by confronting a nuclear-armed peer telling it — how be it ‘diplomatically’ — “We will f*** you up!” But the US, frighteningly, is resistant, and as a result a slow learner. (Europe has a memory, and will learn a lot faster.)
Russia may have to make an example of someone to get its point across. Poland, maybe.
Russia should do the same, seizing the yachts of EU and US oligarchs, perhaps in Black Sea….! Similar to Iran’s seizure of British oil tanker in Persian Gulf after their tanker got captured in Gibraltar…!
Not Should, rather Must…!