EU plans to seize £80bn 'act of war', says Medvedev

The European Union’s plan to fund Ukraine with €90bn (£79bn) of frozen Russian assets would be considered by Moscow as an “act of war”, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said.

- ALEX CROFT

Mr Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chair of Russia's Security Council, was reacting to the plan that EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday would allow Kyiv to “defend [itself] and take forward peace negotiations from a position of strength”.

“If the crazy European Union does, after all, try to steal Russian assets frozen in Belgium under the guise of a so-called ‘reparations loan’, Russia may well view this move as tantamount to a casus belli (an act that justifies war) with all the relevant implications for Brussels and individual EU countries,” he wrote on X.