- Putin's foreign minister called the freezing of Russia's currency reserves "thievery."
- He said the scale of sanctions after Russia's invasion of Ukraine came as a shock.
- He said "nobody who was predicting what sanctions the West would pass could have pictured that."
Russia's foreign minister called the freezing of Russia's currency reserves in light of its invasion of Ukraine "thievery" and said the country did not expect that level of sanctions.
Sergei Lavrov spoke to students in Moscow on Wednesday.
According to The New York Times, he said about the West's freezing of Russia's central bank reserves that "nobody who was predicting what sanctions the West would pass could have pictured that. It's just thievery."
The US and European countries were among those who froze Russian reserves.
Russia has around $640 billion in foreign reserves.
Russia's finance minister Anton Siluanov said earlier this month that around $300 billion — half of Russia's reserves — had been frozen.
Other sanctions on Russia include the blocking the trade of luxury goods and heavy sanctions on Russian oligarchs.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the sanctions on oligarchs as "state banditry" earlier this month.