Hungary suddenly freezes millions of euros of Russian assets
The Hungarian authorities unexpectedly froze Russian assets worth hundreds of millions of euros. The amount of 870 million euros as of the end of November have been frozen by Budapest. This is a very significant amount even compared to other European countries, reports the newspaper Nepszava.
These numbers are even more striking, given the fact that the in the November EU report it was mentioned that only 3 thousand euros of Russian assets were frozen by Hungary.
The newspaper notes that significant assets falling under the sanctions were found in Hungary following the attempts by the Orban government to release the European Union funding.
Up until now, 2.3 billion euros of Russian assets have been frozen in Italy, 2.2 billion euros in Germany and almost 1.8 billion euros in Austria.
Earlier, the EU authorities announced plans to develop a joint plan for confiscating frozen Russian assets in order to then direct these funds to the restoration of Ukraine. European officials estimate the damage caused to Ukraine during the war at 600 billion euros.
The UK government said in November that it had frozen $ 20 billion worth of Russian assets and was going to continue to put financial pressure on the Russian Federation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed hope that the international mechanism for the transfer to Kyiv of frozen Russian assets will be established before the end of the year.