Kiev has seized $1 billion in Russian assets – media

The National Police of Ukraine has confiscated around $1 billion in Russian assets, the head of the department of strategic investigations, Andrey Rubel, claimed on Tuesday in an interview with RBK-Ukraine.

The official stressed that the seized funds are currently being used to meet the country’s needs. Rubel specified that Kiev had seized a Bell-427 helicopter, Gulfstream G650 aircraft, 47 trucks, 55 vehicles and three flatbed semi-trailers, among other assets.

“In total, assets worth 38 billion grivna (some $940 million) have been detected and seized; all of them work for the benefit and needs of Ukraine, including the needs of the military,” he said.

The Ukrainian authorities began seizing the assets of Russian business professionals and companies shortly after the launch of Moscow’s military campaign in February 2022.

In March 2022, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky ordered the forced confiscation of property belonging to Russia and Russian residents. The next month, Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, adopted legislation aimed at nationalizing the property of Russian companies, Russian citizens and Ukrainians who supported the neighboring country’s military operation.

Shortly after that, the SBU, Kiev’s security agency and successor to the Soviet KGB, reported the seizure of $677,000 in assets belonging to Russia’s state-run energy company Rosneft. At the time, the oil major said that it had no assets in Ukraine.

In May 2023, the SBU announced that it had seized all the assets of Russian bankers Mikhail Fridman, Pyotr Aven and Andrey Kosogov. The security office pledged to transfer the property, worth an estimated $422 million, to the Ukrainian state. It included financial and insurance companies, telecommunications and IT companies, as well as a mineral water factory.

In August 2023, Ukraine’s Cabinet Secretary Oleg Nemchinov claimed that the amount of Russian and Belarusian assets blocked in the counter totaled nearly $2 billion. At the time, the minister specified that Kiev had seized the assets of three Russian banks, funds reportedly belonging to Russian metal tycoon Oleg Deripaska, as well as the Demurinsky mining and processing plant that, according to the Ukrainian authorities, was owned by Russian businessman Mikhail Shelkov. He added that vehicles, aircraft, 3,500 residences and 4,000 non-residential real estate assets had been confiscated.

Moscow has decried any steps towards seizing Russian assets as blatant and illegal “expropriation.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called measures of the kind “potentially dangerous,” and warned that Moscow would “endlessly” challenge any potential confiscation in the international courts.