Russia managed to keep about a third of the $227 billion received in 2022 from the export of raw materials abroad. It is reported by Bloomberg. According to the agency, about $80 billion of them are distributed in the form of cash, real estate and investments in companies abroad.
The media called these funds a “shadow reserve” and a “by-product” of the record current account surplus that emerged amid the sanctions.
As Europe’s slowness to impose sanctions on the Russian energy sector, Moscow has managed to accumulate one of the largest current account surpluses in its history, Maria Shagina, an economist at the British International Institute for Strategic Studies, said.
According to Bloomberg, Russia has accumulated the equivalent of about 5% of GDP in international assets in 2022.
Recall that Brussels has long been discussing the question of how to use the blocked Russian assets. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that the European Union intends to confiscate them, but this is not easy to do from a legal point of view. Moscow stressed that they would consider the seizure of Russian assets in favor of Ukraine “in fact, outright theft.”
Source: Rosbalt
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