LONDON (Reuters) – The Russian embassy in London on Saturday described Britain's planned transfer to Ukraine of more than 2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) backed by frozen Russian assets as a “fraudulent scheme.”
Britain said in October it would lend Ukraine 2.26 billion pounds as part of a much larger G7 loan backed by frozen Russian central bank assets to help buy weapons and rebuild damaged infrastructure.
The loans were agreed last July by the leaders of the Group of Seven – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – along with senior officials from the European Union, where most of the Russian assets frozen as a result of the war are located. detained.
“We are closely following the efforts of the British authorities to implement a fraudulent scheme to confiscate income from Russian state assets ‘frozen’ in the European Union,” the Russian Embassy in London said on social media.
British Defense Secretary John Healey said the money would go solely to the Ukrainian military and could be used to help develop drones capable of flying farther than some long-range missiles.
The embassy added: “The elaborate legislative design fails to conceal the illegal nature of this arrangement.”
Last week, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the US transfer to Ukraine of its share of $50 billion in G7 loans as “mere theft.”
($1 = 0.7956 pounds)
