Bloomberg reported about $80 billion of "shadow reserves" of Russia

These funds arose as a result of a record trade surplus, the agency writes. According to BLOOMBERG, $80 billion is distributed in the form of cash,

RUSSIA managed to keep about a third of the $227 billion received in 2022 from the EXPORT of raw materials abroad, according to Bloomberg. According to the agency, about $80 billion of them are distributed in the form of cash, real estate and investments in companies abroad.

Bloomberg calls these funds a “shadow reserve” and “a by-product of a record current account surplus” (in January, the Central Bank reported that Russia’s balance of payments account surplus in 2022 was $227.4 billion), which was formed against the backdrop of sanctions after the outbreak of hostilities. in Ukraine.

According to Maria Shagina, an economist at the British International Institute for Strategic Studies, due to the fact that the EU was slow to impose sanctions on the Russian energy sector, "the Kremlin has accumulated one of the largest current account surpluses in its history." “This de facto nullified the efforts to freeze the assets of the Bank of Russia in March 2022,” the expert said.

Then the HEAD of the Ministry of Finance Anton Siluanov said that the value of assets that Moscow cannot use due to blocking in the West is about $300 billion. The assets of not only the Central Bank, but also Russian businessmen, turned out to be blocked.

The agency estimates that Russia has accumulated the equivalent of about 5% of GDP in international assets in 2022. The fate of Russian funds abroad is gaining more attention as Kyiv's allies, such as CANADA and Germany, put forward proposals to use these funds to compensate Ukraine and help it rebuild.

In October 2022, the EU countries announced the freezing of €17.4 billion of Russian business assets. By the beginning of March, Bloomberg wrote, this amount had grown to €20.9 billion, thus, in recent months, the increase was insignificant. European officials believe there are significantly more assets of Russian billionaires under sanctions than have been discovered so far; the search for assets is carried out by a special working group created in the spring of 2022.

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Brussels has long been discussing how to use blocked Russian assets. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, noted that the European Union intends to confiscate them, but this is not easy to do from a legal point of view.

The Kremlin said that they would consider the seizure of Russian assets in favor of Ukraine "in fact, outright theft." Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov called their blocking illegitimate and violating the foundations of international law and the international economy. Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina has vowed to challenge the freeze on international reserves, and President Vladimir Putin has warned that "stealing other people's assets" will lead to problems for those involved.