- The G7 and European Union are in talks to finance Ukraine aid with seized Russian assets.
- "In the case of private assets, we have to see what is legally possible," Germany's finance minister said.
- The Kremlin said that such an effort would be 'in fact, outright theft.'
G7 and European Union leaders are discussing proposals to seize Russian Central Bank assets and use them to finance aid to Ukraine, Germany's finance minister said Tuesday.
Christian Lindner said he is "politically open to the idea" but acknowledged that "in the case of private assets, we have to see what is legally possible."
"We have to respect the rule of law, even if we are dealing with Russian oligarchs," he told the business daily Handelsblatt and other European media, according to Reuters.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, about $300 billion in the Russian Central Bank's foreign-currency reserves that were being held in other nations' central banks were frozen as part of stiff Western sanctions on the Kremlin.
That blocked Russia from nearly half its reserves and limited international transactions in the frozen currencies. But the latest proposals would take away those assets permanently and hand them over to Ukraine.
The Kremlin swiftly fired back, with Russian spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling reporters that seizing the country's assets for Ukraine would be "illegal, blatant and of course requiring an appropriate response. ... It would be, in fact, outright theft."